Knocked Up, Knocked Down

Four Year Check-In

2011-10-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Hello World,

Not sure if anybody comes around here these days, but if so: HI. How the bleep are you? Nice to see you again. It's been a while. I am back to the moss-green-and-charcoal-blue blog-scape again for a check in. And maybe even to serve...casually anyway...as a guinea pig of sorts, in case anybody is wondering or researching for a thesis project: what happens to women in the longer term future after death of a not-quite-born baby?

A little over four years ago, my sweet and dark-brown-haired boy Zachary was born in a non-living state. The year before that, a four month male "fetus" miscarried. Now, zipping around the house is a very much alive, headstrong, personality-filled and bright-eyed year-and-a-half-old toddler, also a male. A firecracker of will, guts, and determination - this one. Blond haystack of hair, light blue eyes. Not Zachary but someone else, his own person. Oh my lord; the love I have for him is like a freight train roar inside my head - but that goes without saying.

Attempting to process all of these babies and memories and baby-like entities in an organized way, I've got this sandwich of babies analogy in my head. I know that might sound disturbing, but just go with it for a minute. Male one, 2006 - this weak and fluttering ghost of an almost-person, the top piece of bread. Wonder bread, soft and feathery, white flour. Male two, 2007 - this strong and sturdy (albeit not strong enough) - the sandwich filling, potent and flavorful, coloring my life, my outlook, during several intense years and even still. Finally, male three, 2010, the strongest by Darwin's measurements, forming the sandwich base: the thick slice of hearty German-style wheat bread. Got it? That's how I thought about it, last week anyway.

Thinking about Zachary now is like looking backward through a tunnel of smoke and prisms, backward to a whole world, actually - a mental mind-scape. Being a dead baby momma is...well...a mentality, I guess. It's an identity, a way of seeing and feeling, of surviving. It puts you squarely on a certain side of multiple lines - making you part of certain groups, not a part of others. It's a unique and ancient predicament - one of experiencing triumph over extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

Now - in the four year aftermath of stillbirth (GAWD - I still hate that medieval sounding word), living and awesome child in tow:

Motherhood - just as magical, challenging, awe inspiring, exhausting, life-embracing, god-damned amazing as it probably is for a "normal" mom. I guess, anyway. Current kid truly has his own shit going on - he is SOOOO not Zachary, SOOOOO not a drifting relic of the past, or a replacement baby. God no. He's his own little man, and you had better not ruffle his feathers or you're in big trouble. Ka-peesh?

Marriage - complicated. Or maybe it's just me being complicated. That's a whole 'nother blog. I am married to a simply wonderful man. The trauma shook our relationship foundation in ways we couldn't know or predict - long term ways, even, that still affect us today. Things are cool and all, but I won't deny that we are still feeling the tremors from that. Sometimes big tremors. Anyway...

Self - I'm still just me - same job, same friends, same antics, same this and that. Things are good in a general sense. The past lurks, not too far away. Every 3-4 months or so, I get that hot-behind-the-face, tears-welling-up sensation. It's a memory of death, pushing upward and outward against my chest cavity and eyeballs, times - usually - when my current son does something particularly interesting, or when I see Zachary's photo propped up in the bedroom and really pause to look at it. There he is. Was. It's not the need for a warm, wiggling ball of baby-ness in my arms, as it used to be. I've got that now. It's just a sadness, I suppose, a whoosh-feeling memory of the wind knocked out of me, and a melancholy yearning to know who that child would have been.

OK - that's all for now. If you're new to this blog, if you've lost a baby recently, I guess I would say: you survive, you move on, because you have to. Things suck, and get better. Better in most ways, complicated in others. If you're a seasoned "old hand" at all this, then I say: carry on, and thanks for reading my words again. I have to say, I miss writing. Just...thinking of stuff and putting it out there in the form of words, on the off chance that those words strike someone in a meaningful way. Coming up with snarky and borderline inappropriate things to say about the trauma of losing a baby. Stillbirth is so...confusing. Writing, connecting with the world, got me through so much of it. Still does. :)

Washington D.C. Readings November 4-5 (And a Bit More)

2010-10-16T04:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Y'all...

Holy smokes, an insomnia-tinged night.

A few sleepy-surreal ramblings below, but a quick invite first: I'll be doing a couple of informal readings from Knocked Up, Knocked Down in the Washington D.C. area just a few weeks from now, and it would be really cool to have some company from the KuKd/IF crew. So if you're on the east coast and happen to be free, I encourage you to attend. It's not as though I've been running rampant around the country on "book tour" like a glammed-out rock star, so don't expect me to have spiked Elvira hair. Really I'm just going to be in D.C. anyway and decided what the heck - why not put myself out there once or twice. I'll reading a couple of favorite chapters out loud with my most entertaining vocal intonations, perhaps even coupled with a live performance of the stillbirth folk song if I can get my guitar tuned in time. Here are the deets:

1) Thursday Nov. 4th, 6:30pm - Arlington Rock Bottom Brewery, Level 1 of Ballston Commons Mall

2) Friday Nov. 5th, 7:30pm - Westin Hotel Alexandria, The Bell Room

I hope to see you there.

***

Moving on...

What news is there to muse about? On the one hand, I wish I had some insanely juicy stories to share. But on the other hand, I'm glad I don't.

I have a living son who just turned six months old. I'd post a photo but really he just looks like a round, wide-eyed, extremely curious baby who's engaged with the entire world. To me, his existence is an extremely juicy fact - but nobody ever thinks your child is as amazng as you do, so that's that.

I've been asked more than once how past losses affect my current motherhood, or "what it's like to have a child after stillbirth," or some such thing. I think it's a legitimate and interesting question, but surprisingly hard to answer. It's hard to answer because I honestly don't know what kind of mother I would have been if I could reverse the clock, undo the events of the last several years.

For example:

*I have a green leather journal with "Letters to Sean, 2010" inscribed on the cover in hardpressed ballpoint pen. Inside are little frenzied bursts of writing dated every week or two, addressed to Sean himself. I write them for him as an adult, when I imagine him accidentally finding them buried inside an old trunk. They're about him: what he's doing now, the impressions he gives to me and others. They're about me: my feelings and perceptions as his mother, because of course those feelings are complex and multi-layered. Then they always go back to him, these little notes: back to describing in great detail the numerous ways he makes me laugh and glow inside every goddamned day. I imagine a lot of mothers have a journal-ish thing like this.

*I write letters to my husband and leave them on the counter when I head off for work, folded up with a fake postmark and everything. Not all the time; just every few weeks or so. They're kinda love letters kinda, but kinda not. Just rambling-friend letters. It feels important to remain focused on us, our relationship, even as Sean occasionally eclipses that focus.

*At the same time, I have occasional bouts of anxiety over Sean's heart and health, fears that he won't in fact reach adulthood, and need to be reminded by gentle doctors (and kick-ass husband) that he checks out fine. The fear gets really dark and overwhelming sometimes, but I deal. Would a non-KuKd mom have freak-out moments? I imagine so.

*And all the while, I find myself weirdly lax about certain things, knowing there's so much I really can't control. Things like Sean eating dirt, sucking on dirt, tipping over from sitting position and bonking his head. Things like what he eats. I mean, it's not that I don't care what he eats. I just don't fret about it as much as I could or should.

***

Oh, the one thing Sean still does is remind me of potential, of miracles, of what a living baby really is and means. I don't think I knew this even in the throes of my KuKd experience - I just pretended I understood because the sadness would otherwise be so mysterious and confusing. Sean makes me read blogs like this one, about a baby born at 26 weeks, with a hopeful and anxious heart, because I realize now what's at stake. (By the way, that's a friend-of-a-friend's blog, not just some random blog that I found scouring Google for dramatic stories).

OK, onward and upward. And I hope to see you in D.C.

Three Years, and Where's the Hair?

2010-08-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

Not sure if anyone still reads this, but here we go:

Sean is nearly five months old. A couple of days ago, I gave him my traditional morning greeting: scooped him up and french-kissed the folds of his neck. Kind of obnoxious to do to someone first thing in the morning, but it makes him smile so hard I can hear his cheeks crackling - so I do it anyway. Then without warning - in the midst of my snarfling his neck - I suddenly got a dull stomach-knot feeling.

I haven't had a stomach-knot in a while, so this one caught me a wee bit off guard. It was there all morning, just a vague unsettledness. A mild one, mind you; not enough to shut myself in the bathroom and bawl into the sink with the water running, but enough to feel myself grinding my molars together. It was an unusually cloudy day, too; kind of chilly and Englandy-feeling, perfect fuel for brooding thoughts.

It took a few hours and several glances at Sean's hair, of all things, to finally pinpoint the source of the knot: Zachary's three-year dirthday. It was, I'm pretty sure, the day he was delivered, the day that Kevin and I held our child wrapped in a blanket and wondered how and why we got dealt this particular bad hand.

First, I should say that I stare at Sean's hair a lot. Not just his hair, but his fingers and toes, his tummy, shoulder blades, nutsack, everything. Sean's aliveness amazes me constantly, and I melt into a smitten schoolgirl gazing at the new cute boy in the front row of class. I can't stop staring. An old story, I know: parents being amazed by their children (good thing it works that way, or our entire species would die out). It transcends words, this feeling, and it's really why I can't bring myself to write a new blog about motherhood, or even discuss it much with my friends.

I mean, gawd. Not to sound biased in any way, but isn't he delicious, even with a droodle coming from his mouth? Don't you want to just slurp it right up? This deliciousness means I can't sit around and think about the past all day, not when the present is so...alive (who would snarfle Sean's neckfolds if I were too busy pondering the past? Well, his daddy-o and grandparents certainly would/do, but I'd like to think that mommy-snarfles are the best kind). And not thinking about the past means that the hurtful things - including of course the biggest, baddest hurt - get tucked waaaayyyyy deep into the hidden folds of my heart.

But they resurface sometimes, as in the case of the hair.

Sean's hair is light and fuzzy, the color of straw (aside from the darker tuft of mullet-action at the nape of his neck). And his hair happens to be one of the only daily reminders I have that Sean is, in fact, not Zachary. Zachary's was, after all, superdark brown and thick. So it was the sight of Sean's hair that reminded me, again, that I've got this past, and that there was once another different and separate child. Which accounted, I'm pretty sure, for the dirthday-stomach-knot.

Death doesn't ever die, it turns out, even when awesomely amazing life pours in and eclipses most gloomy things. As I looked at Sean's hair, it felt briefly like the wind was knocked out of me, and I swallowed hard. Right then I really, really, really, really wanted to see Zachary's hair again, just to... I dunno. Hold it in my hand? Rub it between my fingers? Hold it up to the light and examine its follicles? Hold it next to Sean's hair to see how different they really are? Set it on the kitchen counter and think deep thoughts about it?

Didn't matter. I just wanted it. So I set Sean down on his play-mat-thing, and began digging my way into our wreck of a bedroom closet. It took several minutes of groveling around on my hands and knees, yanking out shoeboxes of old CDs and dusty books and other random junk that gets tossed into that dark and scary space, but I finally found a light blue, satin-covered box that ties shut with a ribbon. Zachary's box of Zachary-stuff.

Sean was, at this point, crossing over into grumpyland for whatever reason. But I let him lie there and squawk for a couple of minutes while I untied that box and peeked inside. There were some odds and ends, Zach's "cremation identification tag" (so they wouldn't mix up his ashes with that random dead lady who happened to be there at the same time, I guess). His footprints in ink on a piece of parchment paper. My hospital ID band. But the ONE THING that I really wanted, the most real piece of his body that still exists on this planet, I couldn't find: his locks of very, very, very dark brown hair in a zip-lock bag.

I still can't find it. Fucker. We probably accidentally filed it with our tax returns, or it fell behind the refrigerator, or got used as a bookmark and is now stuck inside that trashy romance novel from last summer. Either way, Kevin's been right all along: "good lord, this house needs to be cleaned!" Maybe now is the time to bust out the Windex and Pledge duster and give this small wooden home a good scrub-down. Time to get organized. Re-file stuff. Clean out that bedroom closet.

Maybe next week. :)

A New Blog, Kinda

2010-07-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Update to this post - I started a new blog. Got tired of it fast, so I knocked it off. That's where all these comments are coming from. Sorry, folks! :-)

Coming Events

2010-06-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

Howdy Folks,

For those of you just stopping in, here's the scoop on this blog: I rambled here for a couple of years, and those ramblings are still posted if you care to look around.

If you happen to be in the Seattle, Phoenix, or Washington D.C. area, I'll be doing book-readings at the following locations. I'd love to see you there and hear your story in person, or just exchange a silent knowing hug or a handshake. I'll update this list from time to time.

Tuesday, July 13th @ 7pm, Seattle, WA
Reading/Signing at Ravenna Third Place Books

Saturday, July 17th @ 2pm, Seattle, WA
Reading/Signing at Elliott Bay Book Company

Saturday, August 14th @ 2pm, Woodinville, WA
"Bottles, Books and Babes" Reading and Free Wine-Tasting at Edmonds Winery

September 2-4, Tempe, AZ
Reading and Bookselling at the 2010 Annual M.I.S.S. Foundation Conference,"Exploring Mindful Grief: A Journey for Families and Professionals"

November 4-7, Washington D.C.
Reading and Bookselling at the 2010 International Conference on Perinatal and Infant Death

Breathing

2010-05-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hi, World!

Book launch and a short string of random readings in Seattle are done, ahhhh. Now I'm on hiatus from all things book-related, and hot DAMN, it feels good to be just chilling and breathing for a while. It's been fun, standing up there and talking about stillbirth, miscarriage, and boners (among other things) in the same five-minute time span.

The public speaking element isn't hard for me; I've never had a problem making a fool of myself on stage. The much more nervewracking part is the act of reading something so personal and dear to me, carved up from the darkest part of my life and spewed out into words (even while my heart is really now fixated on the present and future), while attempting to do so in a way that doesn't leave audiences feeling awkward. What's to keep people (especially people who don't know me) from writhing uncomfortably in their seats at the mere notion of such heartrending subject matter as dead babies? It's not exactly a popular conversation starter. Then again, isn't that one of the things that literature is all about? To bring a (potentially widely misunderstood and/or shitty) experience to a greater mainstream audience, making it accessible to them, something they can connect with even having not gone through it themselves? I believe so. Hope so, anyway.

Nothing book-related is scheduled in the foreseeable future, which gives me some much needed time to kick back and marvel at living-son Sean Murf's ever-changing face and mannerisms as he approaches his eight-week birthday. Each day, I love him more fiercely, more than I ever thought possible. Confession: he fuses with Zachary sometimes, and they become like one boy inside my mind, a reincarnation of each other. Somebody would probably tell me that's due to unresolved grief-issues from past losses, but anyway. Sean surprises and delights me in ways that nobody else's child can. There isn't any feeling like putting my face close to his, saying some random word like "banana!" and seeing a smile spread across his face. I resist the urge to talk about such moments to my non-kid-having friends, because I know it would only bore them after about five minutes. That's okay; I'm cool with just keeping such intimate little baby moments to myself, babbling about them to Kevin as we experience it together, wishing I could just suck on those moments forever like never-dissolving candy. I've been told that Sean won't be a baby forever, and that's hard to fathom.

Anyway. I could go on and on about him, but I won't.

One last thing - if you're coming here as a new or new-ish reader, note that this blog isn't really a blog anymore (although...is what I'm doing right now considered blogging??? gah!). Actually, I'll probably post occasional thoughts as they hit me, but I reserve the right to be totally sporadic and random about that. I needed to stop my KuKd-related musings once Sean was born, out of fairness to him if nothing else. Really, what this space is now is a holding place for my past two-some-odd-years of postings about my lost son Zachary, male fetus before him, and "blighted ovum" after him - as well as occasional updates and information about my new memoir: Knocked Up, Knocked Down.

...Until later! -m

She Said: Women's Lives Through Poetry and Prose

2010-05-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Another Seattle-only event (the next and only one planned thus far)...sorry you non-Seattle-ers!

Join me and six other Seattle-area authors/poets this Wednesday, May 5th at 7:00pm for She Said: Women's Lives Through Poetry and Prose, a FREE earthy/sexy/funny (I hope!) literary performance at Hugo House. There will be a cash bar for getting your mind and body lubed up with booze, and I'll be reading a book excerpt: "How a Boner Saved My Life."

If You're In Seattle...

2010-04-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

Hey Rainy-City-and-Thereabouts Readers!

Come over and down some drinks with me and my homegirl Corbin Lewars at our BITCHIN' BOOK LAUNCH PARTY - 7:00pm on Wednesdsay, April 28th. I would be so honored to have you there. We will be celebrating our respective first books, both released by Catalyst Book Press: Knocked Up, Knocked Down and Creating a Life.

There will be music, booze (of course!), snacky snacks, a few short readings, cool people, and - if I can get my nerve up - possibly even a live performance of the Stillbirth Theme Song (don't hold me to that, though - I type this on caffeine). And of course, if you're there, I fully want-hope-expect you to come up and say hello so we can exchange a gigantic KuKd/TTC sister-to-sister hug. Kapeesh?

Cool. Contact me to RSVP and get the full location and deets. I promise it's not in a dark forest or strip club.

Time for Goodbye

2010-04-13T08:10:00.001-07:00

Howdy, KuKd/TTC'ers and Inquisitive Guests,

Last year, I made big, bitchin' promise to myself, my husband, and the ball of babe-age in my tummy: that I would end this blog once Sean came into the world. Well, here he is - so that time has come.

(eyes watering, gawd)

I'm sure you can understand my reasons for this. Mainly, I knew that my own focus would shift to the present child and away from the past, which it has; that this particular space wouldn't be the most appropriate place to document Sean's life and my experience as his mom; and that - ultimately - this blog's shelf-life would have ended by that time. I sure as heck wasn't going to turn this into a mom-diary sort of thing. There are about eight gadzillion of those blogs out there already - many of which are funny as hell and awesomely written - so why duplicate what others are doing so well.

I thought of this cool image of the KuKd/TTC world while I was up at 2am this morning: all of us on our own individual journeys on a labyrinth of dirt paths in a huge forest (can ya picture it?). Sometimes we bump into each other on the same path and walk together for a while, arm-n-arm, clinging to each other for companionship. Just as we get used to one another as comrads, one of our paths suddenly branches off in a separate direction - like when one of us has or loses a baby, for example, or gets pregnant. And then BOOM - we're alone again in the forest. But even when that happens, I'd like to think we never drift too far from each other - because we all have this same intense shared experience that bonds us together. I can see it in the amazing compassion and ongoing support that I've seen right here on this very blog, time and time again during my own KuKd ups and downs over the last few years. Even as my own path branched off abruptly, I could hear the supportive shouts of others, echoing through the forest.

(end crunchy-Zenlike forest euphemism)

I want to issue a humongous THANKS-A-ROO to the many long-time readers and supporters of this space (y'all know who you are) and occasional dabblers, as well as our respective Knocked-Down Hunks. It's you who have made this blog what it is, and inspired me to keep coming back to spew out thoughts, knowing I could be honest without being judged. I've learned so much from your insight, learned what compassion really means, and acquired this awesome and unexpected sense of KuKd/TTC community just from coming back and seeing the same familiar voices and faces piping in each week. Isn't that weird and cool how that happens, how supported one can feel just from virtual chatter? If there were a way to do a big group hug over the Internet, I'd do it now - a hug for all of the folks in various stages of the KuKd/TTC journey, voices and faces I've come to "know" over the past few years here.

And of course, an ultra-huge shout out to ALL of our loved children up in the MTV Realworld Penthouse for Bitchin' Stillborn Babes. I look at infant Sean's face, and I see - finally - what Zachary would have been, what we lost, why it sucked so horrifically. And I see, finally, the untapped potential of all miscarried and stillborn and died-after-born babes in the entire world, the could-haves and would-haves.

(eyes watering again, gawd)

* * *

Although my posts will stop, the blog itself will stick around in one form or another - probably as a holding place for information about my new book, occasional related updates, and archives of earlier stuff posted here. The hunks will stay; why deprive the world of that eye candy. If you're really interested in the Sean-updates that my physical-world friends and family receive, feel free to connect with me on Facebook, or shoot me an e-mail.

I'd like to end with a few last photos. I'll call this gallery: Death, Life, and Dog Poop.

Zachary, where it all began (holy goodness, I loved him so!):

Lil' Sean Murf, new seed of life (holy goodness, I love him so!):

Tebow the dog, getting used to little bro:

My Knocked-Down Hunk with baby hunk-o-babyness:

Bath time:

Last but not least - and totally unrelated to anything: here's Tebow's bag-o-shit clamped in the car window on the way back from the lake because we couldn't find a trash can (hee hee!):

Boo-ya!

Adios, amigos.

The Second Baby

2010-04-08T06:03:00.000-07:00

Howdy, Guests-n-Regulars!

Baby numero dos, second to baby numero uno (that ball of cute babe-age, Sean Murf), landed on my doorstep a few days ago:

Waahhhhhh! Can you hear it crying a-la-just-born-baby? Mommy, look at me! Here I am!

Why, hello sweetie! Yes, I'm glad you're here, after more than two years of working and waiting and gestating!

Unlike Sean, produced in a heated moment of intercourse, this second baby started out differently (and if you've seen little ditty before, scroll down and ignore):

One night in Ecuador, 2007
I sat on a wall with a hot guy named Kevin,
Sipping a beer while I bitched about life.
And then Kevin said, "Hey, my sad little wife!
Take all those thoughts swirling 'round in your head,
and spin them into something funny instead!"
"But what's so damned funny?" I asked with a frown.
He said "you won't know if you don't write it down."

So I did.

Now after two-and-a-half years of typing,
of adding, deleting, hoping and griping,
of family and friends pushing me hard,
of whining to Kevin that "writing is hard!"
Finally it's here: my very first book!
It would sure mean a lot if you'd go take a look.
It might make you chuckle, or find yourself crying,
but in Kevin's words: you won't know without trying!

It would mean so much to me, really and truly a lot, if you'd give this book a read and help me spread the word about it - particularly to newly KuKd or TTC mommas/daddas who might be feeling like crap. It's hard for me to say that here without sounding really slimy and self-promotional to my own ears, blegh. Rest assured, my goal is not to make a million bucks off it (as I recently told a friend, I hardly get a dime off each copy sold - so I'll consider myself lucky if this book buys me a couple of Coronas and a new laser ink cartridge). ]

Really, I want it to be read by you and others because I'm hoping that readers will connect with some of the feelings and thoughts expressed on its pages. The book - not so much a literary classic story with a beginning and end, but rather a series of snapshots of surreal KuKd life - is the product of my own feeling weirded out and isolated over the past few years. And it's got drawings, too - which I did on the #174 bus on route to work. Things like:

Me, pretty sure there's a tumor in my brain slowly killing me (see it making my face melt?)

Me versus Mammary Glands: realizing in horror that my boobs think there's a real-life baby to feed.

And of course, Zachary. The Zachary of my imagination, what he would have looked like in his teens.

I'm also hoping that a fellow KuKd'er might tell me something like: "OH YEAH - I totally felt that exact same way!" And hey: if you live in the Seattle area, why not come to my happy little BOOK LAUNCH PARTY - 7pm on April 28th? E-mail me if you'd like the deets - monica@monicamurphylemoine.com.

ANYWAY. You can find the book at Amazon.

Birth versus Dirth: Chode Stitches

2010-04-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC'ers and Inquisitive Guests!

This post is about chodes.

But first of all, a quick prelude: huge and huggy thanks for the outpouring of support and loving words. Baby Sean Murphy felt the love. I briefly held him up to the laptop screen and read some comments out loud to him, stopping only upon hearing a telltale train-rumbling sound from his butt-region. A poop spurred by joy, no doubt (quickly followed by an abrupt, 5-foot arc of pee that spritzed the ceiling, my & Sean's forhead, and the opposite wall...he really must have been in a spirited mood).

Coming from my fellow KuKd folk, and eSPECially those fighting the TTC/IF battle, those loving words carry extra weight, strength, and complexity, like bars of quartz dug up from the earth. Dude, I've been there. Perhaps it's that personal history that leads to my current urge to start every post from now on with the mantra: "I am thankful for this child." I'm not really going to do that, because that would be borderline annoying, but the thought is there. I am thankful for this child.

Moving on...

Where to go from here? Don't worry. This blog is not about to become a minute-by-minute account of my surreal new parenthood or Sean's spitting-up patterns, of what it's like to subsist on four broken-up hours of sleep per night for eight days in a row. In a later post, I'll add a few more Sean-pics and and a brief blurb about Sean's birth for people who are interested. The most important detail to me is that it was a birth, and not a dirth.

Speaking of dirth (which, correct me if I'm wrong, we decided is the verb to describe what happens to a stillborn baby: death + birth), that's a nice segue into what's on my mind this afternoon:

CHODES!

Specifically: chode stitches in birth versus chode stitches in dirth.

Okay, hold your horses, you linguistic perfectionists. I have no idea if it's spelled "chode" or "choad," or if that's even a universal term for the ridge of flesh between one's anus and one's vaginal opening (or penis). It's just what Kevin and I call the damn thing. I've also heard it called a "taint" - but of course, these terms came from my old Peace Corps buddy J, who notoriously smoked way too much weed. So I wouldn't trust what he says.

ANYWAY. The point is this: with Sean's BIRTH, as with Zachary's DIRTH, I've got stitches down there in the "chodal/taintal" region -compounded by the elephantitis-like swelling of the crotch, and some lovely token hemorrhoids (I opted to spare you of photos). (insert: I am thankful for this baby). Looking only at these physical aftermaths of baby-delivery, one might think that BIRTH and DIRTH are exactly the same.

But they're not! Here's my experience.

With Zachary's DIRTH, the physical aftermath - the pain, the swelling, the chode stitches, the everything - was an oddly welcome, temporary centerpiece in my world. Everyone was fixated on it: Kevin, me, the doctors and nurses, our parents. We were coached endlessly in how to care of my battered post-delivery body, sent home with printed-out instructions. I could recite to anyone exACTly how many stitches I had, and where. Upon getting home, it was all about my physical recovery. Me, lying around in bed, airing out my bloody crotch (how's that for visual imagery?). Kevin running errands to and from the drugstore, picking up Tylenol and things to make me more comfortable. Me, taking drawn-out sitz baths and relaying the details to Kevin. Man, we thrived on that shit! And when the pain finally began to subside...that's when real bitch-ass sadness sank in.

Looking back in hindsight, now I get it. The pain was, I'm pretty sure in my detailed psychoanalysis, was something for everyone to focus on other than the real horror: the missing baby.

Now, fast-forward to Sean's BIRTH. Different story. Nobody at the hospital really talked about my chode, my stitches, my bruised post-delivery body. To this day, I'm still not totally sure what the hell went on down there - I've got stitches and it hurts, that much I know. The pain, eclipsed by the baby himself, has become more like this annoyance in the background, an afterthought. So, it's really taking me longer to heal than last time - just because I keep jumping out of bed and roaming around (hard not to do when there's a fussy kiddo clawing for my booby). I wish I could just bat it away like a gnat in my face.

* * *

So, chodes.

I just think it's weird: how physical pain can be welcome one moment, and not so welcome the next.

The World Just Got Tiny

2010-03-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the graveyard shift!

Everything has shrunken, for now, to revolve around the astonishing new creature who arrived (alive!!!!!!!!) on March 26th. And as you know, aliveness is the ultra-high standard that we strive for in the land of KuKd.

Introducing Sean One-Week-Late Murphy LeMoine, formerly known as Fetus:

Flushed and awestruck as a newborn infant is placed on my chest, right after delivery. Wait - that's Sean! I wonder how on earth my five-foot-one frame managed to carry an 8-pound-10-oz baby (!!!):

Here we are, a nuclear family in the traditional, non-knocked-down sense. Feels kinda weird, in a good way:

Eh bien sur, les grandparents. Producing a live baby is a family affair, after all. Touch your computer screen... can you feel the grandparental joy emanating from this picture?

* * *

I swear I've got more coherent thoughts to share, and will do so in my next post. For now, even stringing together coherent thoughts is mildly difficult. I'm exhausted. Happy. Astounded. Afraid. Ecstatic. Concerned. Amazed. Exhausted. Did I mention exhausted?

Signing off at 5:22am, west coast time. I've been up since 1am, working the graveyard shift, and sleep is coming like an opaque cloak falling over my eyes. Nighty night, and back in a few days!

5 Stages of KuKd Momma with a 4-Day Overdue Baby

2010-03-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

*

Stage 1: So What's it To Ya?

"You really wanna know when he's due? I'll tell ya: FOUR DAYS AGO! Yeah, you heard me right. And yeah, my gangster gear don't fit no more. And yeah, he could drop out right here and now in Seven Eleven, next to the doughnut case - and you'd have to help. You gotta problem widdat? Hey, where ya going with that horrified look on your face?"

* * *

Stage 2: C'mon, Baby! Bring it!

(Later, private conversation): "Dude, WTF?! What'cha doin, embarassin' ya mama like that! Hurry up -n- getcha butt over here! And not in Seven Eleven, fa gawd's sake!"

* * *

Stage 3: Mild Desperation

"So what if eating this whole thing gives me a serious case of watery shits and a mouthful of canker sores? Someone on Yahoo Answers said it can also cause labor! They sounded like they knew what they were talking about (except for all the misspelled words)."

* * *

Stage 4: Acute Desperation

----- Message -----
From: LEMOINE,MONICA M
Sent: 3/22/2010 8:21 AM
To: Office of Susan Warwick, MD
Subject: castor oil with a shot of vodka??

Hi Dr. Warwick - I've gotten a bunch of friends telling me that I should drink a few spoonfuls of castor oil with either a shot of hard liquor or milk of magnesia. Everyone says it works - I mean, causes lots of pooping and maybe some barfing, but ultimately induces labor. I'm intrigued but sort of scared at the thought of explosive diarrhea and drinking this medieval-sounding elixir..have you ever heard of this? Any thoughts on whether it's OK to try?

*

RE: castor oil with a shot of vodka??
To: Monica M Lemoine
From: KC, LPN
Received: 3/22/10 8:36 AM

Unfortunately this option is not recommended as a way to induce labor. You should try to relax and embrace this last week of pregnancy. If you have more concerns or problems before Thursday certainly let us know and we can try to find an appt to have you seen sooner.

Damn.

* * *

Stage 5: Chilling Out

Ahhhhhh...

"I guess I'll just try to relax revel in the pregnant pregnantness of the impregnation for a while."

The Update-less Update

2010-03-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

Howdy Folks,

Baby LeMoine is 48 long-ass hours overdue. He's still alive, I'm pretty sure - which is the biological state we're going for. Every once in a while my stomach moves up and down on its own like a self-activating trampoline, which I take as a sign of life. I have to wonder, though, if the Great Being Above purposely does this to people who have been waiting a long time for a baby: makes our babies come late. KuKd people, infertility-fighting people and the like. Is it some final test of patience, of endurance?

(By the way, don't bother suggesting holistic strategies for making labor happen. No matter what it is, I guarantee you that I've seen it, done it, gotten the t-shirt. Eating pineapple? Yup. Eggplant? Yup. Oatmeal stout? Yup. Walking? Yup. Dancing to rap music in the living room? Yup. Sex? Um....not so much. But hey, if your body resembled that of a sore-breasted manatee, you wouldn't exactly feel like a temple of passion either.)

Anyway.

Not that I'm complaining. Bitching a little bit, I guess, but that's just because I'm impatient. I really, really need and want for this thing to become reality and not just a dream, so I can finally relax and believe it's going to happen. I feel fine overall, walking and working, socializing and going to movies, taking showers, doing girl-push-ups in the living room, eating dark chocolate from Kevin's "secret" stash (yes, he's one of those skinny bastards that can eat one teensy-weensy square of chocolate each day and be satisfied with that, just that, and nothing more). I'm grateful that body didn't get the urge to release this baby early, all thin and jaundiced and frail. Nope: this little guy's got to already be in the 8-9 pound range, if the size and feel of my whopping belly are any indication.

What's more, at least you're pregnant. I can hear the message bubbling through the atmosphere, having now lived with one foot inside of the KuKd/TTC/IF world for several years now. It's funny the messages that you hear as you go through life and have different experiences, messages that would've otherwise landed on deaf ears. I wouldn't have heard this message before. I would have taken pregnancy for granted, taken positive outcome as a given, been utterly unaware of the painful glass wall through which other mommas and wannabe-mommas might view my current circumstance. But I get it now.

Which leads me to the big, huge, huggy, lovey ball of emotion I want to hurl at anyone reading this wants a baby but doesn't have one (by the way, I classify myself in that category still, for now). I want to say thanks, first, for the outpouring of support for me and for Sean sparked by my last post. It means everything, that support, especially coming from KuKd/IF/TTC mommas who - through their own pure grace and compasssion - manage to still have room in their huge hearts to celebrate someone else's pending motherhood, someone else's pending baby. That's a LOT of space in your heart, more than I imagine most people having.

It makes me wonder if I, too, am one of those big-hearted people. I know I haven't always been. If I had, I wouldn't have balked at the idea of going to my friend C's daughter's first birthday, a year after Zachary's stillbirth. I wouldn't have pulled the stillbirth-card right then, but put it aside to support my friend.

But I feel inspired now to be a better person, someone who gives more and takes less. I feel like loss and death have turned me into such a taker over the years, a needer, and less of a giver. Shit; I can't even be bothered to donate five bucks to NPR, even though I listen to it every day on my way to work. I should really try to cough up some change where change is due.

Back to the subject of babies...part of me wants to say...sorry. Sorry? Sorry for being pregnant? That's not quite the right word, but what IS the right word to describe this feeling, the feeling of compassion toward others who don't have the thing I have at this exact moment? If I could wave a magical spooge-propelling wand to give others lasting, thriving pregnancies, I would? Like my friend B, for instance, who made Sean the paper origami-crane mobile. She's been wanting a baby for some time. I know it's a source of pain for her. And yet, she's genuinely happy for me, for Kevin, for Sean. I've got this weird urge to say Hey B, I'm sorry. I'm sorry my cervix sucked up spooge. I wish I could pass along some of this spooge-sucking energy to you. But that just seems like a damn strange thing to say.

Anyway. Everybody should look at the IF/TTC/KuKd community and feel instanteously inspired to do good in the world and show genuine compassion for others, even in the face of your own personal struggles. I wish everybody would.

Those are the thoughts de jour, this strange purgatory-day in Seattle, where K and I are floating between parenthood world and non-parenthood world, neither here nor there. Thank you, again, for the glowing well wishes. I'll certainly post an update here once something update-worthy occurs.

Peace, world!

Dear Fetus

2010-03-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Fetus,

Can I still call you that? Fetus? Or have you graduated to the level of "baby" by now? Why don't I just break all societal rules for a moment, and call you what your dad and I have known you to be for some time: Sean. Sean Murphy LeMoine, that is. As in Sean Connery. Sean Penn. The late Sean P-Diddy Combs. A humble, boring, single-syllable Irish name. Not very creative, but this is the name that spoke to me and your dad the loudest, spoke of all things real and simple, outdoorsy, saltwater-scented, grounded - just like the you of our imaginations. Not the fluffy and frivilous name of someone who might disappear at any moment, like Copernicus or Octopusian or Atticus Dillwinkle.

Just plain Sean. A strong, shimmering, earthly name that seems most likely to keep you here.

Allow me introduce myself - the woman I am at this moment, eight-something PM on Monday, March 13th, 2010. I am your mother, the person inside of whom you are now floating blissfully in a cocoon of dark watery warmth. I know; isn't it weird? That's me, the sound of that heartbeat trumping yours in loudness and vibration, the whoosh of blood through vein and arteries, the shrill voice belting out songs in the car!

What's a car, you ask? Never mind. You'll figure those things out later.

Back to introductions. Monica Murphy LeMoine is the name, age 34. Pisces and proud. Irish and English descent, not that that's unique in any way. Thinker, emoter, flawed. Frequent laugher. Loud. College English instructor, wannabe writer, extrovert. Born as Monica Lee Murphy in Hollywood, California. College degrees in French and English. Coffee addict. Red-wine hater. White zinfandel-lover. Bacon-obsessor. Dance-party maniac. Studied abroad multiple times. Spent 2.5 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan, known to foreign service people as "Ickistan" (and with good reason). Loved it. Married to a brilliant, quiet guy with loads of common sense, which you'll certainly inherit to make up for marked deficiencies on your maternal genetic side.

You are 39.5 weeks along today, and due to emerge any minute. That's a remarkable feat! You are, after all, the first to make it this far in this particular mother's body, the small string of siblings before you having lived too-short lives due to things we can't control. Yes, pat yourself on the back for showing such perseverance and fortitude! You kept chugging along when my own capacity to hope felt weak and shrunken, when cynicsm took over. You've kept going, kicking my insides, relentlessly optimistic about your own positive destiny - like an obnoxious little Polyanna fairy landing on the shoulder of a grumpy old scrooge who thrives on grumpiness. You've stamped out my grumpiness, and forced me to hope.

Oh, there's still plenty to be grumpy about. Pay attention to your first big life-lesson: life itself is a miracle, and nothing is ever guaranteed. I finally realize that now. Something could still happen - anything - to keep you from entering this world alive. Even after you make it through the tremendous hurdle of birth itself, you could still be snatched by the billowy, translucent arms of Mother Nature. Who knows what that old broad is up to, what plans she's brewing up for you.

But don't let that scare you, snuff out your own optimism. Because ultimately, you've become a symbol of hope - not just for me, but for the handful of eager and loving people surrounding you and awaiting your safe arrival into the "outerworld." That is, the place that I'm writing you from.

(Are you sufficiently freaked out by this conversation?)

Just a quick preview of what your new space will look like - because it sure as hell isn't going to match the dark reddish globe in which you now float. It's a room, just an ordinary room that we still use as a semi-office space. But there are some things in here that make it yours, and that - hopefully - will help connect you to the past. I thought long and hard about how to do this in a non-ghoulish way, how to create a space that's yours, yet that honors the male-this and male-that which came before you but didn't make it this far. Particularly, I want you to have a piece of Zachary with you, to know that you have brothers in some strange cosmic form. Zachary would have been a nice older brother to have, right in the midst of his terrible twos by now, probably throwing shit across the room and head-butting you at random. Wouldn't you have loved that? Of course you would.

Notice, on the walls in the pictures below: Mom's Amateur Stillbirth Art. A fish, a butterfly, and two primary-colored flowers. Everyone told me not to throw these out, so I didn't. And now they're yours. These were painted just days after Zachary's death, in a time span of ten heavily-focused hours, with hardly a break to pee or have a snack. Just paint flung furiously on canvas, powered by all the sadness and yearning building up in my heart.

Ultimately, though, they were pictures of hope - and that hope is now you.

Notice the hanging mobile of folded cranes. See that? Yes, that's a handmade gift from B, a treasured friend of our family - and one who has struggled for some time to have a baby of her own. See how compassionate, gracious, and kind she is - thinking of you even despite her own frustrations and disappointments? It's a lesson we can all learn from, one that I'm hoping you'll pick up through osmosis as you stare up at those origami cranes. Plus, they're just cool-looking.

And there's us, your dad and I - waiting for you. And Tebow, your canine family friend, already guarding your space fiercely. And books - your own personal library - all gifts from people waiting for you.

See how cool the world looks?

C'mon over.

When a Friend Disappears

2010-03-11T17:49:00.000-08:00

Hello, Guests and Regulars!

First, the good:

I had several great, productive days in a row - the kind that feel as though I just applied some kind of cosmic dental floss to my life and cleaned out the dark, disorganized corners. The kind that Real Simple magazine makes look so damned easy if only you follow their bulleted lists of tips-n-tricks. Check this out:

1) Got caught up, for the most part, on grading essays. Wow. That never happens.

2) Windexed the sticky, coffee-stained top of my desk at work AND filed a bunch of papers. Wow. That REALLY never happens.

3) In a spurt of love and wifey-ness, took it upon myself to do what is ALWAYS Kevin's job and not mine: paid the five or six bills that had been quietly stacking up on the table for a few weeks. And I even recorded all payment details in the checkbook register! Wow. That most DEFINITELY never happens.

4) Dutifully went into every room and watered the houseplants, which I've known for the past month are probably dying slowly of dehydration. For some reason, even with that knowledge, I couldn't bring myself to water them.

Yup - feeling organized and on top of my Martha-Stewart game.

But look: we wouldn't have "good" if we didn't have "bad," would we? Life can't all be fun-n-games, a spirited Karate Kid montage of getting inexplicably hyper-organized! Oh life, complicated knocked-down life. I am continuously amazed at the weird, long-lasting after-effects of dead-baby-motherhood, how one's dead-babyness goes away for a while, then resurfaces in the oddest and most unexpected ways. It makes me wonder how it'll manifest itself next year, five years from now, ten or twenty. Will it shrink into a lump of coal in my psyche, only to balloon out into a cloud of all-consuming gray dust every once in while, a melancholy triggered by god knows what? Will I think of Zachary while I'm old and white-haired, swinging on the porch of the elderly-folks home where nurses feed me Jello?

Case in point:

After all that joyful and twisted organizing of home and workplace, I went out with C and N - my Baby Lady friends - to our favorite pizza joint for our regular girls' night out. Then, I came home and plopped down on the cold front steps in the dark for a few minutes, rested my head on my hands, and allowed myself to feel melancholy. Not melancholy from being with them, but from being without.

I'm pretty sure I've talked a lot on this blog about the strain a pregnancy loss puts on a friendship, particularly when one co-prego friend goes on to have a healthy baby and leaves the KuKd loser behind like uglier, less coordinated one who didn't make the talent show. Your uterus, your genes, your luck, your something just wasn't good enough to make the cut - sorry, kiddo.

C and N, well, were those friends. We were a trio with due dates all within weeks of each other, back in autumn 2007. And of course, I didn't make the cut. I sort of dropped of the planet for a while after that, not really able to interact with them as I had in the past, for obvious reasons. And miraculously, simply because of their stellar character and amazing capacity to let go of me while never really letting go, we remained friends at a more-or-less distance throughout it all.

Now, being 39 weeks preggers: we've been back in full swing. Suddenly, the topic of babies is allowed to come up, the unspoken rule of "we don't talk about babies EVah" now obselete. It's like this weight lifted off all our shoulders, and as my belly gets bigger, we've been hanging at the pizza joint with correlating increased frequency, reliving - in my mind, sort of - that shared fantasy of "what's to come!" that we had back in 2007. What's to come! Parenthood, the three of us! Together! OK, I'm a bit slow to catch up, but here I am, coming into the finish line!

But.

The melancoly: N'S MOVING HALFWAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY. And she's moving in...like...a few weeks! For good reason: job opportunity for her really hot husband. Honestly, I'm happy for her. I get it, the need to move in search of better things. Kevin and I have done it countless times in our nearly 8 (!!!) years of marriage.

Oh, I know. It seems so trivial and who cares: N's moving. Big deal. She's packing up all her things, her 2.5-year-old son who was going to be Zachary's first experimental gay lover, his little baby sister who came later, all the chipped dishes and books and toys and pillows and clothes in their house.

But...but...but....now was supposed to be, finally, OUR TIME! If I were to revert to my 10-year-old self and blubber woefully to my own mom with my lower lip quivering, that's what I'd say! Now was supposed to be the time when I finally catch up to N, the time when we both have kids in unison, when the imagined future that we always talked about could finally (albeit in a slightly different form) come to fruition. These were the golden days, coming up! The N-and-Monica-special-co-mommyhood friendship I'd dreamed about!

But it really, oddly stings somehow, losing - in a geographic sense anyway - this treasured friend. She's not just a friend: she's a huge, hulking piece of my KuKd story, that black second half of 2007, the swirl of sadness and disappointment that year represents. She's a character in my life, a major player, one of the many large reasons why losing that baby hurt. It meant losing a friendship, a certain type of friendship that was loved and wanted. She and that achingly cute son of hers are so intertwined in my head with my own achingly cute son, the boy he would have been, that to have them both disappear is just...unnerving somehow.

JUST as I near the edge of this new baby-having cliff, off she goes. To Chicago, of all places!!!!!!

I really have this urge to grab her arm and beg her to stay, but what good would that do. Like I said, I'm happy for her. I wish her well.

Fucker.

:-)

Anyway, to bring this full circle, back to flossing junk out of my life. This weekend, perhaps I'll indulge in another uncharacteristic organizing spree. Time to channel my selfish friend-hoarding energies into something...presumably...selfless! Something like cleaning the house. Kevin will love it.

KuKd Friend as Survival Tool

2010-03-07T06:52:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Scouts-n-Guests!

Yup: I just called you (some of you, anyway) a scout! Hold on a sec, and I'll tell you why.

One of my favorite activities is thinking of books to write - especially when my brain is charged on artifical caffeine energy. K and I both do it, as is true for a lot of other people, I'm sure. Don't you ever find yourself in the middle of ordinary conversation and suddenly you or someone else goes: "Dude! Someone should totally write a book about that!" K and I will get really into it for a while, but nine times out of ten, the idea just sort of fizzles - as so many ideas do.

Only one of my crazy-book-writing-ideas didn't fizzle. The only reason this one didn't fizzle, I'm pretty sure, is that I was driven by such pure, raw KuKd-emotional-pissed-off energy - not to mention loads of coffee to boot - and somehow this gave me the drive to crank 75,000 words onto a laptop over the course of a year or so. It's not officially ready to go just yet, but should arrive at my doorstep in bubble-wrap packaging in a month or two looking more or less like this:

Best of all, it contains some hand-drawn sketches that I shakily produced on my #174 bus commute to work - things like g-string panties fighting with Hanes flowered bloomers, and me clutching my milk-squirting breasts with a horrified expression. Oftentimes there were sketchy old geezers looking over my shoulder as I drew with black marker in a dog-eared notebook - but it didn't bother me so much, providing a bit of eye candy.

But more on that later. For now, I'm onto a different, not-yet-fizzled idea that came to me a long time ago as I was carving my Grape Nuts cereal into a milk-soaked crescent shape. This new book, which I've probably mentioned before and which somebody really should write, would look kind of like this:

Except that instead of "U.S. Air Force Survival Handbook," it would be called "KuKd Survival Handbook." Just a thin, bare-bones guide, the kind you could tote along inside your rucksack as you navigate your way down that lonesome miscarriage/stillbirth path. Good bathroom reading, waiting-for-the-bus reading, sitting-in-the-dentist-office reading.

How cool a book would that be?

I mean, not like there aren't a million other KuKd-handbook type of books out there already. But this one, the one now lodged in my imagination, would be different, dammit! If I get my act together - that is, once I'm able to drink coffee to the fullest extent of the caffeine-while-breastfeeding law again - I'll crank it out myself this summer. I've already got loads of ideas up my sleeve.

* * *

My recent surge re-inspiration to get cracking on this KuKd Survival Handbook started at last weekend's baby shower (hold on, don't vomit on the screen just yet), where I did lots of this:

...and had a long, heartfelt hug with her:

Who's "her" and what's "this?"

Well, by "this," I mean sitting sideways in a large armchair like a knocked-up manatee, unwrapping lots of shiny new childrens' books, and smiling from ear to ear. It was a "book shower," actually; finally a baby-shower theme that I could live with, since the idea of registering for all kinds of made-in-China baby parephernelia was giving me anxiety. This event involved everyone bringing their favorite kids' book to help us get a library started for the baby on the way, with a note inscribed to explain the book's meaning. Man oh man, we got some kick-ass boooks, and man oh man, I was a happy camper.

By "her," I mean J - a buddy from the Infant Loss Retreat that I still remain strongly connected with. I knew within five minutes that she was a keeper. Smart (a lawyer! How much smarter can one possibly get?), cynical, and with a sense of humor. J's daughter Annika was born premature, lived only a few days in the hospital, and died of that horrible necro-thing where a baby's intestines stop working. J's got a 9-month-old son now, so she's been through it all: the losing, and the life after losing.

When arrived at the baby shower, my heart did a little forward flip. I think I just about attacked her, cornering her for a prolongued hug and some hardcore eye contact. There was just so much we both knew that didn't need to be said, this mutual understanding, shared history. A "how are you" from her was different from a "how are you" from anyone else - it just carried a whole new meaning. I can't explain how meaningful it was to have this person from "that life" represented at this event, how comforting it was to know that at least one other person in the room "got it" - the full-on KuKd experience, I mean.

And she made my little Zachary-connection-at-the-baby-shower easy, a little public shout-out to both Zachary AND Annika, a simple wish that they could both be here with us all to celebrate new life on the way. That was it. It felt good to say, and J's presence gave me the balls to say it.

* * *

BACK TO THE BOOK IDEA: KuKd Survival Handbook.

J's presence at the baby shower confirmed: one survival tool that I would put right up front, super high on the "camping equipment list," would be finding a KuKd friend.

No matter what it takes, where you have to go, how much effort it requires: if you've been pregnant and then lost, FIND A FRIEND who not only gets what that was like, but who is also a person you connect with on a real-friend level. It took me months to realize the importance of this, and I swear I spent the first half-year of my post-Zachary life kind of wandering around like this pale, disconnected shell of a human being - a chasm between me and my kid-having friends, another chasm between me and my non-kid-having friends. Before the Infant Loss Retreat and meeting other gals who were walking my same path, I had no damn clue about the importance of this.

I remembered this at the shower, soooooo grateful to have J around, and thought later to myself: gotta write that book. The KuKd Survival Handbook. Gotta add that to the tips-list at the front. Maybe someday!

Bake Talk

2010-03-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC-Regulars and Inquisitive Guests,

When it comes to cooking, I've decided there are two kinds of people in this world.

First, there are people who can dig their hands into any recipe, whether from a book or website or their own free-flowing minds, and invariably spin it into something perfectly tasty and aesthetically beautiful in a seemingly effortless fashion. Take, for example, my friend C - who baked this spread of yummy goods for the baby shower (at which I did, per readers' advice, give a verbal shout-out to Zachary, and felt good doing so):

I know, I know. You don't even have to say it: f**king gorgeous. Jen, who hosted the shower, is also one of those superhuman people: everything she cooks, I mean literally and astoundingly everything, is always among the best of that thing I've ever tasted. And she does it with a shrug.

Then, there are who - no matter how good our intentions or how much time and effort we exert - manage to turn recipes into sloppy muck. Cakes turn into the sunken rectangle variety you find at church bake sales. Roasts turn tough. Cookies too crunchy. Or - although the flavor might be there - the food itself looks like a kindergartner made it. When something turns out, it's an accident - and oftentimes can't be replicated. You might have a small repertoire of dishes that you know turn out well - but if a NEW recipe ever works, you know deep down that it worked not due to your tremendous talent in the kitchen - but because some cosmic ray of culinary luck happened to slant its way across your kitchen at the exACT right moment in time. And those sorts of recipes - the kind that turn out brilliantly - will never be duplicated, unless that culinary ray of luck returns.

I consider myself an oft-frustrated member of the second category. Actually, "resigned" is probably a better word - for I've come to accept my propensity to screw up recipes, spill things, drop things, over/under-cook things, or - worse - get tired of a cooking project right in the middle of it, and finish it out the lazy way.

This is what happened when I tried to make these:

Who wouldn't want to produce these as a late Valentine's day treat?

It started off okay: a batch of regular old sugar cookie dough, which I dutifully chilled in the fridge. I always end up wondering why you're supposed to chill sugar cookie dough anyway, because that turns it into a miniature boulder that you practically need a steamroller to flatten. This was no exception:

Hard, rock-like fragments of stone cold dough. Already, I could sense my ambition fizzling. It was getting late, and approaching time to watch TV with my feet in K's lap. So I put away my rolling pin, as well as my awesome heart-shaped cookie cutter - the one I purchased specifically for this once-a-year occasion, and grabbed a knife instead:

So what if they weren't pristinely beautiful rolled-out hearts? Nobody would know the difference. These were more like modern abstract hearts.

After melting a bag of chocolate chips with a wee bit of shortening, I decided to try dunking the full cookies instead of just half-cookies, in order to hide their hidden ugliness and make them look more professionally abstract/modern/chic.

Alas, the full-on dunk didn't quite work, as evidenced above. You can see what happened to the one that got the full immersion: not only did it soak up half the pot of chocolate itself, but turned into what looked like a chocolate dog turd.

So I ended up doing them all in the half-dunk style.

Not exactly what I'd been aiming for, but my friends didn't act surprised, instead gobbling them up out of Zip-lock bags. That's the good thing about being in that humble second category of people: the bar is set so low that people don't expect much from ya. ;-)

Connecting Stillbirth to Life

2010-02-28T02:45:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC Guests and Regulars...

There's a baby shower coming up, and a conundrum in my head to work through. Why can't things be simple and easy, without conundrums?

Feel free to be troubled by that term: baby shower. I know it pains some readers to think about, because it pained me for the longest time. I get that. What other words could be used to describe this event?

For this one in particular, it's a small gathering of uber-high-quality, intelligent, kind and compassionate women from a range of generations - my friends and mother and mother's friends - coming together to eat crab salad on croissants. It's being organized by Jen, the incredible friend that I first called upon learning of Zachary's in-utero demise. The baby-gift-giving concept was making me vomit-worthily anxious, so I stole my friend K's idea of a participatory "book shower:" in lieu of gifts, everyone bring a favorite kids' book with a note inscribed for this unborn baby's first library, and we'll all go around and explain the meaning of the book we brought.

All of that, I'm cool with. Excited about, really. It's the conundrum of where/how the past fits in with this event, or if there's a even place at all for it, that's been on my mind lately.

* * *

A wee bit of background, of course, before returning to the conundrum at hand:

For every calamity that can happen to a person, it seems, someone has written a self-help book about it. And for miscarriage and stillbirth, that definitive book would probably have to be Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby - what's essentially known to be THE Lonely Planet Guide to the Weird, Mind-Trippy Land of Dead-Babystan. If you're like me, you've probably thumbed through pages of it. A well-meaning friend or family member might have shipped a shiny new copy to you via FedEx, or perhaps a grief counselor slid this decent-sized book across the table in your direction. And if you're like me, you probably glanced through the pages with mixed emotion.

First, you wondered crabbily what useful things a PhD-holder named Deborah Davis could possibly tell you. "Deborah Davis" was decidedly not the name of your cool, authoritative older sister who gets it - but rather one of your mother's friends who wore waist-high jeans and made casseroles with french-fried onions in the 1980s. Yet, you also felt strangely comforted by the thought of a PhD-holder named Deborah Davis standing behind you, whispering words of guidance into your ear. Even the cover of this book - sort of a light peach with soothing fonts - was nice to look at. It felt like something official and organized, giving you hope that society was with you on this strange journey, holding your hand and telling you what to do and think, warning you of what was ahead.

At least, this is how it was for me, dipping into this book.

I've pretty sure I've got a copy of it still lying around, dusty and crammed into a storage box in the sagging clapboard garage behind our house - although I've not cracked it open in a year or two. There's one chapter toward the end that I've got half a mind to read right now - and if it weren't 3:00 in the morning and drizzling outside, I might even throw on a sweatshirt over the one I'm wearing, wander out there in my socks while my dog stares at me dumbfoundedly, and dig around for it - just to get to that chapter.

It's called something like "Coping with Subsequent Pregnancies," a section I recall not only ignoring back when I was routinely skimming pages of this book, but feeling mysteriously irritated by it. How dare they include a chapter that had zero relevance in my life, that - in some dull and undefinable way - hurt to even glance at!

* * *

Now, back to the conundrum, to the reason why I feel suddenly compelled to dip into that book again - into that chapter in particular - with the dim hope for some useful insight. Being 37 weeks into what Deborah Davis would probably consider a classic example of a "subsequent pregnancy after stillbirth," I guess I'm not surprised that something as commonplace as a baby shower might trigger a bit of mental weirdness.

The conundrum, the question here, is: is there a place for remnants of the past at this baby shower? A place for the memory of Zachary, the theoretical older brother of the not-yet-born infant whose pending birth is bringing all of these amazing women, shiny new books, delicious crab salad together under one roof? He would have been two-and-a-half years old right now. What about the 4-month "male fetus" before Zachary, that abstract concept of a baby who would have been almost four years old today? Can either of them be honorably mentioned at this buoyant celebration of a new life to come, or will their memory cast a visible downer over the entire affair?

I don't know, of course, because baby-loss - and pregnancy thereafter - is like the Wild West: land without rules or conventions or rituals. You bumble along for years and years, making up rules of social etiquette as you go along - hoping you don't offend or baffle or alienate anyone in the process.

What I do know is that memories and feelings of the past, of Zachary's in-utero life in particular, of the motherhood-fantasy I'd associated with him - crop up at the oddest times nowadays, like when I'm thinking about baby showers. I feel overly reflective sometimes as I try to connect those old memories to this new stage in my life. It's cool to imagine such a thing, that our experiences in life are more than mere unrelated dots on a long line, which we pass through chronologically like unthinking robots, never looking backward or forward. Wouldn't a Zen-Buddhist guru-type advocate such a circular and reflective way of living?

So, the baby shower.

It was Jen, this very same Jen, that organized the one for Zachary two years ago - except that Zachary's, of course, was abruptly cancelled. For the past few weeks, I've had this strange urge to use this upcoming baby shower as an chance to honor and remember not just the new baby supposedly on the way, but the old baby who never got the baby shower. And not just honor the babies, but the "me" that I was back then, who never got the baby shower either. How wrecked and pathetic I was at the time, how inconsolable, how unfair life felt to me.

They're on my mind, that old injured me and the baby that didn't make it - but, as I said - it's not clear to me if there's a place for those haggard relics of the past at this sparkling and hopeful new baby shower coming up. There is, of course, the danger of turning into one of "those people" who can't stop dwelling on their own calamaties, who are always pouncing on opportunities to publicize and dramatize the woes that they cling to. God, how I fear becoming one of "those people." So I've been pondering more subtle possible ways to slip it into the baby shower:

-raise my glass of sparkling cider and bang my fork against it, and demand to make a toast "to Zachary," hoping that people don't squirm uncomfortably in their seats

-covertly write his name in the sheet-cake frosting using my index finger, licking the icing off my hand before anyone sees me do it

-duck into the bathroom by myself for a quick bawl-session on my own

-wander off and gaze pensively out the window, hoping some deep thoughts of the past just come to me naturally

That's it - I'm out of ideas.

Maybe there IS no place for that past here, at least not publicly. Maybe I should do what everyone else is doing - my parents, my in-laws, my friends: keep my eyes trained forward, focused on the current baby in my belly, and quit bringing up the cobwebby past that holds no relevancy in this new life to come. Just chillax and enjoy my baby shower - the books and the crab salad and the company - being surrounded by amazing friends and family. Revel in it for the happy little isolated "dot" that it is, and stop thinking so hard. Stop looking back at past dots and trying to make sense of it all. Maybe it would be considered bad form to do otherwise.

That's cool; I can do that - keep my own little conundrums private inside my head, and grapple with them there. I suppose that's where grief always leads a person anyways: to a place where you're left to handle lingering thoughts and feelings on your own.

But MAN OH MAH, it sure would be nice if there were another way. If I get my act together this morning, maybe I will make it out to that sagging clapboard garage afterall, and dig up old Deborah Davis' stillbirth bible. Maybe she's got some useful gems to dish out on this subject.

WTF Part Deux

2010-02-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

Hello, Guests-n-Others!

As my belly grows outward in a craze of outlandish horizontalness, here are the top two questions coming at me this month:

1) What's your "birth plan?"
2) Have you considered a homebirth, or at least the help of a doula?

Which lead me to WTF Part Deux.

* * *

First - and it's not so much of a WTF but just a general musing: the broader question of the birth plan.

Birth plan? What's that? Is that like...a developed-country phenomenon?

OH YEAH - I remember now!

Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to close your eyes for a minute and journey into the past with me, back to when we were all pregnant that first, wondrous, innocent time. Back when plans mattered, fairytale dreams came true. Are you following?

Like me, you may have been asked to fill out a "birth plan" in your first trimester - a sheet of official-looking paper filled with fun questions, completed by you and returned to your doctor. How did you want your labor and delivery to unfold, it asked. Who did you want in the room? Did you want music in the background? Pain drugs or au natural? What labor-positions struck your fancy? How did you want your baby handled afterward? Like a child asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you conferred seriously with your partner and checked off answers, painting a dreamy portrait of baby-delivery day like bright oil paints on canvas.

Ahhhhhhh...weren't those the good'ol days? I remember them so fondly for knocked-uppages #1, 2, and even 3. Early 2006, and again in 2007, and even in 2009: sitting Kevin down so we could discuss this most serious subject, pressing in my answers with black pen like a responsible pre-mom, and dutifully returning my answers to the clinic.

Fast-forward to the present. I vaguely recall the nurse handing me a blank birth-plan form for this pregnancy, only for it to get tossed into trash can on my way out the door. Here's my one-sentence birth plan, I tell people when they ask (and they DO ask with astounding frequency): get my ass to the hospital when the time is right, and push out a living baby.

That's it. That's my birth plan.

I don't blame people for asking. These days, it's a normal thing to inquire about, I guess. I just wish I had something juicier to say, a list of big dreams for something greater and more noble, some stronger convictions and passions, something to show that I've really done my research and thought hard about this. Years ago, I did - I swear.

But some of you old-timers might recall this post a while back, in which I relayed my take-home message from that week's visit to a shrink: "What ARE plans anyway? They're things we make up inside our heads to give us the illusion that we're in control."

Losing a pregnancy is never a part of the plan. Right? Right. So, having your plans get burned over and over again eventually takes its toll on your psyche, this smart shrink-lady told me. I guess that's part of my personal toll: I don't make plans anymore.

At least not birth plans.

* * *

Next, the much more WTF question of homebirth - or, shall I say, what K and I have been calling the Homebirth-Amway-Salespeople (HAS): WTF is UP with that?

Before I go any further, let me say this: I happen to know that a very large handful of fine, intelligent folks reading this are homebirth enthusiasts. Which is to say: they had a plan to deliver their babies at home with the help of a midwife, and that's what they did (or tried to, anyway). I respect that. It's all good. Go homebirth. Go midwifery.

The homebirth question is similar to the birth-plan question, but with an Amway salesperson element that makes me feel like a small insect who inadvertently invited predatory company into my home.

Let me explain how this conversation usually unfolds. It starts with a fairly innocent question, a girlfriend or female who has either gone the natural-childbirth route or plans to - but has certainly researched its benefits extensively.

Her: "Where are you planning on having your baby?"

Me: "At a hospital."

Her: "Oh." Long pause. Already, I'm sensing that I've given the wrong answer, that I uttered "hospital" too quickly and self-assuredly, possibly indicating that I've not considered other options. It's as though I just told an Amway sales rep that no, I've never tried their whatever-the-fuck-they-sell, and they now have this meatball of opportunity hovering before their eyes.

Her, continuing: "Are you going with just regular doctor or a midwife? Some hospitals have midwifery programs."

Me: "Regular doctor."

Her: "Oh."

There's an even longer pause, and now I know for sure where this conversation is headed, my earlier hunch confirmed. A subtle shift in said female's demeanor, a change in the tenor of her voice to someone who now knows more than I do, and who senses a glorious chance to enlighten me, un-saved heathen that I am! Again, like an insect cringing and scurrying beneath her sympathetic scrutiny, I've proven myself part of the naive mainstream masses that have not yet learned of the soul-saving glories of midwifery, of the homebirth experience, of bloodying one's own linoleum floor, of hypnotizing oneself with fantasy images of hot naked men as a way to numb the pain instead of using drugs.

Here it comes...

Her: "Have you considered going the non-traditional route? Group Health has a great midwifery program! I can send you some links, some articles. You really should read them! There are so many great ways to give birth other than in a hospital with an epidural in your spine..."

And the conversation sort of fizzles there, because by that point I've shut down. I mean, I sort of pretend to carry on in conversation, talking and not talking, smiling and not smiling, but my brain has gone elsewhere - because the person I'm conversing with has just morphed from friend-on-equal-footing into a Homebirth Amway Salesperson in a blue suit and tie, standing at my doorstep with a clipboard in arm. And suddenly I'm too busy to talk, with WTF's swirling around inside my head.

WTF is UP with the homebirth salespeople, and W(hy)TF do does it matter to them how I choose to deliver this child? In what way does my personal choice of baby-delivery affect anyone else's life besides mine, my husband's, and my baby's? WTF is up with anyone believing in something - a religion, a product, anything - so righteously and rigidly that they feel compelled to convert others into following their so-called enlightened path?

My friend Jen explained it like this: "...but a lot of women don't know they HAVE other options besides just a routine hospital delivery." Maybe true - but so what? Let'em find out on their own! Let'em read about it, ask about it, think about it like the smart people they probably are. If I were out killing my neighbors everytime I was in a bad mood, then yeah - I could see people pulling me aside to suggest alternate ways to deal with negative emotion. But it's not as though hospital-delivery causes mass death and destruction (do they?), and therefore ought to be stopped.

As I said: if you have a midwife, awesome. If you don't, awesome. If you give birth on a Grayhound bus, awesome. At home, awesome. In a hospital, awesome.

* * *

Which leads to my final note to Dear Public.

Dear Public:

Thanks for checking in, for being concerned about my and baby's well-being, for giving advice on how you feel things ought to be done, for wanting to know about my plan.

Just know that childbirth for a KuKd momma is psychologically complicated, and there's a reason for every choice we make. Do not be alarmed by the sinister terms "hospital delivery" and "no birth plan," as these do not necessarily equate to "poor ignorant woman who needs to be saved in the name of Jesus Christ the Lord of Homebirth Wonderfulness." Relax: things will be okay.

You lose a lot of luxuries when your only experience with birth is death - and that includes the luxury of pondering ten different fairytale-ideal birth plans, of doing anything that seems inherently risky. For some of us, that risky thing might be homebirth, or getting a midwife involved. For others, it might be something else entirely. Your focus becomes on survival of the baby, survival of your family - and yes - that might mean, and in my case it certainly means, surrounding oneself with doctors and nurses and machines and fluorescent lighting when that baby is ready to come out. It means - or might mean - getting more ultrasounds than you ever thought prudent or possible.

Knowing now how little control you really have, how irrelevant your former plans and ideals have become, you now cling to the things that seem the most certain - the things that you know. And those things are oftentimes the conventional things that, to you, seem bad or outdated or unenlightened.

But, like I said: relax. Everything will be okay. Let me have the things I think I need, and don't stress yourself out with the homebirth-and/or-midwife salespitch. It's best, I think, to let a KuKd momma believe what she believes, let her do what she and KuKd-daddy-o have agreed is the surest path to a positive outcome, and trust that they - like you - has the baby's best interest in mind.

* * *

Oh, and as far as my birth plan goes - I did tell the doctor I wanted no less than Britney Spears blasting in the background, and a bacon-wrapped steak dinner with a large cold glass of Alaskan Amber Ale for my first post-delivery hospital meal. She chuckled and said she'd look into it.

(See? Who says I don't have a plan?) ;-)

Dear Public

2010-02-14T16:56:00.000-08:00

Greetings Guests-n-Regulars!

But now that I've gotten that last post out of my system, I'm feeling compelled to reign it in a bit and be...well...civilized. Special thanks go out to the calm, male voice of rationality piping into the comment thread:

Everything I knew about birth pretty much came from synthesizing hundreds of television and movie portrayals. Now that I’ve been through one successful birth process, my knowledge includes that.

I had not one inkling of what happens with stillbirth and the related processes until I read this blog. I hope you can forgive the sins of the ignorant, because there’s just so little information out there. It’s not a common conversation topic, and I’ve never heard of stillbirth featured in a movie or sitcom.

That’s one reason why these blogs are important. Many readers are all too familiar with the heartbreak and reality of stillbirth, but many of us never had a clue.

Blogs are a great place to vent about common frustrations. But also, I'm pretty sure he's right: that most people don't mean to be insensitive our women's past KuKd experiences, that the "sins of the ignorant" ought to be forgiven. How could people understand? They can't, of course - which is one of the things that makes miscarriage/stillbirth such a lonely and confusing experience: there are just so many things in there that the world doesn't get. So we're forced to work through it on our own minds, and bitch about it in places like this.

Anyway, Chris' comment got me thinking: why not just put it out there and explain this thing that I wish others understood? That is, use this blog as...an educational tool of sorts? Maybe - just maybe - someone who hasn't been through it before will read it, and have a little bit better an understanding than before. And maybe, somewhere down the line, that little bit of understanding will have a positive effect for somebody else.

Here goes nothin.' I'm going out on a limb here with all kinds of general platitudes and "you" instead of "I," so correct me if I miss or misconstrue anything.

* * *

Dear Public:

It's one of those extra logistical matters slapped on a stillbirth-mommy by the doctor, no less surprising for us than for you: when a pregnancy ends, the fetus or baby must be expelled. And if the baby has developed into anything beyond a floating blob of blob-ness, that means going into labor, whether naturally or induced.

I'm not talking about some special, less jarring, more merciful variety of labor that Mother Nature reserves for stillbirth mommies. Indeed, one would think that modern doctors would have some trick up their sleeves to allow you to avoid such a dramatically painful, physically challenging "end" to your life as a pregnant woman - especially when you've just had the emotional wind knocked out of you. But no, they say. It's best for everyone - including your own internal organs - if you undergo labor the straight-up old-fashioned way; the heavy-duty, screaming-and-shitting-yourself-while-your-partner-stands-by-dumbfounded way.

With good reason, you wonder how your life reached this level of surreal horror in the past 24 hours. Nobody - your mother and grandma, your childbirth classes that you may or may not have taken, your now-useless What to Expect pregnancy bible, your sex-ed teacher from junior high - ever taught you how the fuck to do this particular...thing. You've never seen it on TV or in movies, so you've no pop-culture knowledge to draw from.

Yet amazingly: you find yourself suddenly knowing with primitive certainty that you can do this, and you will - because Mother Nature wouldn't ask you to perform the impossible. That's the remarkable thing that dead-baby labor teaches you:

Humans are capable of doing a whole damned lot.

Armed with that knowledge, it's time to grit your teeth, strap on your workboots and gloves, and get the fuck going. Nobody is going to push this baby out of your vajayjay for you.

* * *

Good news: you do have a bit of help along the way, aside from the casseroles already stacking up on your distant front porch from well-meaning friends and neighbors.

The most prominent "help" is the formation of a temporary, translucent blanket of numbness around brain. This film of numbness (which has been unscientifcally proven to last longer in men than in women) is one of your body's most brilliant natural survival mechanisms, for it enables you to stop thinking and feeling just long enough to focus instead on this final, painful task at hand. Think of it as a shield of sorts, blocking - for the time being anyway - the black tidalwave of grief lapping at your ankles and threating to pull you under. It keeps you afloat in the short term. Without it, nothing would ever get done in this world.

There are also various forms of "help" for kicking your confused-as-all-hell body into baby-expulsion mode. Some women prefer the "scenic route:" that is, waiting for her body to discover on its own that oh yeahhh! I get it! I'm supposed to get RID of this now! Other, less patient types (like me) prefer the faster and efficient (although much less scenic) "interstate route" to labor. And that, of course, means things like pills lodged between your gum and cheek, and seaweed sticks shoved up your vag. Yes, seaweed sticks. Don't ask me what these do; it's something involving the cervix. And certainly don't ask me how someone invented this as a labor-inducing method, what ancient Chinese woman was experimentally sticking things up there "just to see what happens."

* * *

Welcome to the danger zone: this slow-motion window of time after news that you won't be getting your living child, but before labor has begun. Even with these meds, going into labor can take hours, days, even longer. During this time, you've nothing to do but lie around in a hospital room and wait. And think. And feel. And rest your hand longingly on your still-bulging-but-now-unmoving belly. And watch cheezy infomercials in the middle of the night - lots of grinning elderly people with white dentures. How depressing.

Not surprisingly, it's during this lag time that your treasured "temporary blanket of numbness around the brain" can falter, slipping down and exposing your psyche to the cold, harsh wind of reality, the magnitude of your loss. On and off, you bawl. Your partner is by your side instantly, clutching your hand, dealing with grief in his own way - but ultimately you two are alone on separate islands for a while as you work through this in your heads.

Sleeping through the night is difficult if not impossible. Nurses slip in and out of your room to adjust various wires connected to you, waking you from half-sleep. A few of them look you in the eye but most don't. Either they've been in the business too long to still feel compassion, or the sight of your still-bulging belly makes them uncomfortable. Friends and visitors might come by to see you, too. They'll look at you, right in the eye - but not at your belly either, because they can't. It's like the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody wants to talk about, gone from a symbol of life to a symbol of death in an instant.

It's no wonder you can't keep your grief at bay during this time. You wish these seaweed sticks would hurry the fuck up and do their job.

* * *

And then, labor itself. No point in going into that here. It's just like any other labor, for the most part. The cramping, the breathing, the pushing, the groaning, the epidural (for some of us), the partner hovering above you, the hoping the sight of a bloody infant and its accoutrements coming out of you doesn't ruin your sex life forever.

The only difference between this and "real labor" is that, at the end, something big and three-dimensional and quiet slips out of you, instead of something screaming and writhing around. The placenta comes out afterward, this gigantic disk of tissue. The nurses whisper as they whisk these things away while your head falls back on your sweaty pillow. The air feels heavy and static, sad. Even the doctors, the old crusty ones who've seen everything, have grim looks on their faces. Nobody throws confetti or brings foil-wrapped chocolate cigars in pastel pink or blue; nobody's snapping pictures on their cell phones; nobody's making mad phone calls to friends and family to share the glorious news. Everyone is just glad its over, and wishes things could be different. The communal sense of that is palpable.

You're exhausted but relieved, astounded at the capabilities of your female body, and your partner is clutching you in your arms and pretty much loving and admiring you more than he ever has before. On his pyramid of needs, your survival comes before the baby's - and now that he's seen you make it through this physical hurdle, he knows that the two of you will ultimately survive.

* * *

What happens in the end is different for everyone. Some women hold the baby, as we're told again and again that we should. Some don't. Just about all stillbirth-mommies, though, can't wait to get home. The job of that "temporary blanket of numbness around the brain" is now done, and you can feel it shedding quickly as reality hits you. Time to go and begin what will be the much, much harder job of grappling psychologically with this death of someone you love, perhaps one of the most confusing and misunderstood sorts of death in the world.

The good news is that, having now made it past this physical hurdle, you know deep down you'll survive this part too. Delivering one's dead offspring turns out to be one of the most intensely beautiful, macabre, transformative, awe-inspring, humanizing experiences a woman can possibly have.

WTF?

2010-02-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC Mommas-n-Hunks and Inquisitive Guests!

Okay. I'm not trying to bash the public here. Just an innocent question that's popped into my head lately: WTF do people think happens to a baby/fetus when the pregnancy ends before it's supposed to?

I mean, do they think it gets...like...instantly absorbed back into the mother's bloodstream? Extracted surgically? Puked out? Beamed up, Scotty? Extracted in the middle of the night by a grim-reaper equivalent of the baby-toting stork - like a black stork of death? Does it stick around inside the uterus and reincarnated into the next baby, if there is one?

I'm just wondering - because these past few weeks, I've been directly or indirectly told/warned by several people about how hard labor is, how tired I'm going to be afterward, how important those Kegal exercises are, how I'd better be ready to lie around the house all day with ice packs pressed against my bruised and battered private parts, how I've got hemorrhoids and crotch-sticthes and other awesome bodily thrills to look forward to, how painful or not painful or amazing or not amazing it is to push a six-pound entity with arms and legs out of one's vag.

And not just any old people, like the superstar Seattle moms who approach me at the Greenlake community center to offer unsolicited birthing advice (yup!), but colleagues! Friends! People who know me! People who know my history! I think it's kind of funny, actually - so I just smile and nod, rather than snarkily responding with "yeah, I know." Why not let people think they're bestowing some sort of ancient secret knowledge upon me.

But seriously, WTF? I guess that whole unsavory detail of stillbirth or even miscarriage gets blocked out of people's minds. Weird.

Coming soon: another WTF - this one related to Jehova's-Witness-Amway-Salespeople-Homebirth-Advocates.

Wilderness (KuKd?) Survival Skills

2010-02-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd'ers, TTC'ers and Inquisitive Guests...

Kevin said this once, or something like it: "Promise me that we'll keep having an adventurous life forever." Those were his first words when we decided with giddy excitement to stay together after coming home from Uzbekistan. Of course I promised him that. Keep that quote in mind, because it'll come up later.

* * *

It's Superbowl time - and the postange-stamp sized living room of our 1939-built home is filled with loud, boistrously beer-drinking males. I can't say I mind having so many nice, cute, happily football-watching male specimens in close proximity. If they all had their shirts off, it would be even better. As for me, I've retreated into the quieter "office-soon-to-be-baby-room," where I just stumbled across this blog on basic wilderness survival skills. And I quote:

Imagine suddenly finding yourself stranded in the wilderness. Perhaps your plane has crashed, or you have become lost. Darkness is falling and you are on your own. Self extraction is out of the question. Your next course of action could mean the difference between a miserable life threatening experience and reasonably comfortable survival.

We assume that you are not grievously injured; that you can still function well enough to take care of yourself but need a survival guide outlining the essential steps you must take to survive in the wilderness.

Do the Most Important Survival Tasks First

Flailing around in the wilderness without a well thought out plan isn’t going to increase your chances for survival - but it could reduce them. Proper actions taken in proper sequence will enhance your ability to survive.

The first question you should ask yourself in this situation is “what are the most important survival tasks to be accomplished”?

Lots of seemingly reasonable, if not slightly simplistic, bits of insight here. Although, I must admit, as a mere Someone Who Could Potentially Get Lost In the Woods, I'm not sure how useful these tips really would be when faced with the a real challenge to survive. Perhaps I'd find this blurb more helpful if I were literally naked and trembling in a dark forest at this exact moment, rather than pre-reading it from the comfort of my own armchair.

So, to give this blurb more meaning, I tried to picture myself during the months after losing Zachary and the fetus before him, which is the closest wilderness-survival experience I remember actually ever having. With that in mind, I re-read this wilderness-survival intro more like a more focused version of Dead-Baby Mad Libs, like this:

Imagine suddenly finding yourself stranded in the wilderness (KNOCKED DOWN). Perhaps your plane has crashed (PREGNANCY ENDED BEFORE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO), or you have become lost (CAN'T SEEM TO GET KNOCKED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE). Darkness is falling and you are on your own (ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HAVING BABIES). Self extraction is out of the question (YOU AIN'T GETTIN' THAT BABY BACK, KIDDO). Your next course of action (BOOZE?) could mean the difference between a miserable life-threatening experience and reasonably comfortable survival.

We assume that you are not grievously injured (WELL, NOT PHYSICALLY, I GUESS...); that you can still function well enough to take care of yourself (DEPENDS ON HOW YOU DEFINE "FUNCTION") but need a survival guide outlining the essential steps you must take to survive in the wilderness (SURE! GIMME WHATCHA GOT).

Do the Most Important Survival Tasks First (SUPPRESSING BOOBY MILK WHILE BLOTTING BRUISED CROTCH WITH TUCKS MEDICATED PADS)

Flailing around in the wilderness (RUNNING INTO THE STREET SHRIEKING LIKE A CRAZY WOMAN FROM HELL) without a well thought out plan isn’t going to increase your chances for survival - but it could reduce them (YOU MEAN I MIGHT DIE IF I DON'T HAVE A PLAN FOR RECOVERY? THIS IS NOT GOOD). Proper actions taken in proper sequence will enhance your ability to survive. (FINE, BUT WHERE DO I START?)

The first question you should ask yourself in this situation is “what are the most important survival tasks to be accomplished”? (I KNOW! MAKE PLANS TO GO BACKPACKING IN A REMOTE CENTRAL AMERICAN JUNGLE, WEAR A LOIN CLOTH AND HAVE LOTS OF PRIMITIVE SEX!)

Here's how and why I found this blog: I was Googling "survival" in hopes, still - 2.5 years later - of making sense of my own psychological coping mechanisms in dealing with my KuKd past. I was curious to know, I guess, if wilderness survival skills are anything like stillbirth/miscarriage survival skills, if I could use one to help me understand the other.

Why do I give a crap about this now? It's over, done. I healed the way I healed, dealt the way I dealt, for better or for worse. But I was thinking (read: overthinking), again, about my friend's insightful message from my last post, and the kind of mother to new baby Theo that her earlier stillborn daughter, Annika, had caused her to become. Stillborn Annika made my friend into a better mother to later-brother Theo. That's the final message that I distilled from her words:

A better mother.

One who appreciates the preciousness of his life more than she would have if she'd not lost an earlier baby.

Honestly, I read this and thought it was poetic, brilliant, touching. But it was unsettling in some weird way, too - because I wasn't totally relating to it. So I wanted to know if my current...um...baby-related weirdness, if you could call it that, stems from some primitive coping mechanism of my own. Which brought me to my Google search for "survival."

You see, supposedly there is a baby who is set to arrive with kicking, screaming force in just six short weeks. He will suddenly fill our home and our lives with cuteness, loudness, and a poopy stench. I feel oddly as though I should be preemptively appreciating the preciousness of his life now, perhaps even more than I did Zachary's. I should have a nursery painted and furnished, clothes bought, car seat installed, breastfeeding classes completed, bottles and binkies and what-nots stashed away in anticipation of his thundrous arrival, pre-school picked out, elementary school lined up. I should be thinking of him, planning for him, and not for me. I should already be...before he even makes his grand appearance on planet earth...

a better mother.

But I've not done any of those things. In fact, an outsider stepping into my life right now would find no evidence of a baby on the way, save for a dog-eared ultrasound picture from four months ago, stuck to the fridge with a magnet that says, "Coffee first, and then your mundane bullshit!" (and the magnet is so big that it just about obscures the entire picture anyway, so you'd really have to be looking for it).

Here's what I HAVE given thought to - absolutely inordinate and obsessive amounts of thought:
EUROPE! AIRPLANES! COBBLED ROADS! CAFE AU LAIT IN LUXEMBOURG GARDENS! EATING CHICKEN FEET AT A CROWDED SHANGHAI MARKET! And once in a while, the fact that I'm thinking of those things instead of nursery paint colors makes feel like a bit of an oddball.

To start, right after my last "successful" ultrasound - the one where my doctor told me as seriously and earnestly as she could that "this is a normal pregnancy" - you know what I did? Not run off to Target to stock up on baby booty. Nope: I marched into the Chair of Arts and Humanities office at the college where I work, and told her to put my name in the hat for the next faculty exchange in China. That means: baby, husband and I would spend 12 weeks teaching at a Chinese college sometime over the next few years.

Then, I downloaded the latest Fulbright Exchange application, which could - maybe, possibly - land the three of us in another country - Nicaragua, I hope - for a year in 2012. And THEN, I began researching apartments to rent in Paris or Amsterdam this summer - THIS VERY SUMMER!- as part of my mom's 60th birthday - a family trip to Europe with baby.

Totally selfish, all of these. Oh, I say they're about baby, about giving him lots of "cross-cultural exposure" as a child. And I think they are. But who am I kidding? That's not the whole story. These ideas are actually about me and Kevin, about our dreams we've always had, things we want, things we've imagined ourselves doing with baby ever since we started trying for one. They're about sitting on a blanket with baby beside the Eiffle Tower, drinking wine and stealing kisses while baby is looking the other way.

They're things that sometimes cause others, I know, to look at me like I'm wacked: but airplanes have germs! And hospitals are medical wastelands over there! And your baby's whole sleeping/pooping/farting/puking routine will be irreparably screwed! Deep down, I know to some degree: they're right. But that doesn't stop me from believing that our kid will handle such obstacles like a real man, that some overseas-air will do him good, that he'll in fact benefit from these experiences in some crunchy cosmic way.

And it certainly doesn't stop me from obsessively planning and fantasizing and imagining like my brain has gone haywire.

Stop Googling airfares to Madrid. You need to install a car seat.

* * *

Is this normal, this fixation on getting my ass overseas with baby and husband?

"Promise me that we'll keep having an adventurous life forever."

(echoing in my brain)

I distinctly remember leaning into Kevin one night at the tavern about six months after Zach's stillbirth, the neon jukebox lights flickering behind him, and telling him I'd never rest everything on having a baby again. It was the second time I'd banked on a baby future - mentally, emotionally, everything - and gotten burned.

I'd like to look back and think that this was a normal thing to think, say and feel - part of some primitive "wilderness survival mechanism" that might even earn honorable mention in the survival-skills blurb above. I'd like to believe that it's been my simple, weird way of handling trauma: of clinging to this notion of an "adventurous life" as though it is, in and of itself, a lifeline.

Something terrible could happen to this baby, even after he's born - and the thought of life going completely flat and dark without him is...well...unbearable. So I have to plan for a life that seems bright and awesome and exciting to me, with or without baby. And that means having cool trips planned, dammit.

So, back to Googling "survival." I'm hoping I'll find some evidence that all this frenzied trip-planning is, in fact, a valid survival tip - that just because I'm doing that at the moment instead of installing a car seat doesn't mean I'm not being the preemptive better mother that an earlier stillbirth is supposed to turn me into.

But damn. We really should be installing a car seat.

Outta Sorts-n-Stuff

2010-02-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd Mommy-os, Daddy-os, and Inquisitive Guests!

* * *

Today I felt out of sorts. Not downright depressed or anything, just kind of anti-social and weird and worried about stuff. Does anyone else ever get in funks like that? I forgot to even run a brush through my hair or put on Cherry Chapstick - the two main components of my morning beauty routine - before hopping the bus to work. Then, upon arriving to work, I was determined to have as little human interaction as possible, which is admittedly hard if you're a teacher. So I slipped into my office and slipped back out, zombied my way through classes and a workshop, ducked into the student union to grab a plate of chicken-n-veggies, and inhaled it while scurrying off to catch my bus home.

Human interaction avoided, with the exception of a few students: check.

* * *

I saw Juno this week, The Movie That Everyone Loved But Told Me I Ought To Wait a Few Years Before Seeing. My mother was so concerned, in fact, that she called on her way home from the theater and left a message on our machine, which I still remember clearly:

"Hi honey! Dad and I saw Juno at the mall today. Great movie, but whatever you do, don't go see it! Wait a few years until you're ready. Oh, and the main character really reminded us of you."

Now, having seen it, I'm pretty sure she didn't mean the main character was like me in terms of looks, not that I wouldn't love to believe I look like Ellen Page. Must be the profanity, the baggy sweatshirt, and the shouting demands for the "spinal tap" during labor. Anyway, I'm also pretty darn glad I waited - yeah - "a few years" before seeing it.

Juno: it's witty, sad, gritty, and funny as hell - well, funny if you share my own twisted brand of humor. The characters in it are cool in a slightly annoying, edgy cool-person kind of way, similar to Superbad. It also tugged lots of tears and made me keep getting up and running into the kitchen for nose-blowing paper towels. Just lots of baby-related drama. If you're an infertility-fighting sister in particular, this movie will strike you hard.

But, as my mom says: "Wait a few years until you're ready."

* * *

Yesterday I got a one-hour massage as an early Valentine's day gift to myself, since - rest assured - THIS gal is not going to be slipping into that black bustier-n-stirrups getup from my springtime Victoria's Secret jaunt of last year (gawd...was that really a year ago???). Oh, it'll come out again to play, once I'm no longer of walrus-like proportions. Assuming that day comes.

Oh, how tiresome it is to hear myself think and talk about my own occasional bouts of irrational panic. This one I'll mention briefly because it perhaps relates to today's anti-social, anti-hair-brushing behavior. It happened while I was halfway through my massage, lying on my side in a darkened room with Enya-esque music in the background. My brain should in some faraway Zen-like place, but instead it kept wandering into whatever that space is where paranoia lives, where we overthink ourselves into muscle-tensing funk: I haven't felt the baby move since this massage began, not once.

The thought hit me out of the blue, and even the masseuse - incidentally a younger girl who looked like Ellen Page - noticed it:

"You feel tense all of a sudden. Am I hurting you?"

"Nuh-no, I'm fine. Just, um, thinking about stuff."

That evening, and all day today even, there was some occasional flicking and flitting around in there, but none of the full-on fetal gymnastics I've gotten used to. Why isn't he moving with gusto, all the time? It just puts me in a funk when he doesn't, and then the fact that I'm in a funk puts me in an even greater funk, because I just don't want to be one of those ever-worried types that gets pulled into funks really easily. Sigh.

Did I always worry like this? I seem to think not. Gawd, I'm irritated with myself.

* * *

One of my fellow KuKd momma's daughter Annika died...oh...some-odd years ago from nec-ro-something, that horrid thing that I can't spell or pronounce, where a preemie baby's intenstines stop working. Anyway, she (the friend) now has another baby named Theo, and I asked her once how her past experience with Annika affects her relationship with her new son.

She sent me this really lovely and fascinating response, which I went back to reading last weekend. Not sure what compelled me to relook at this, other than the occasional thoughts I've had lately about how to integrate baby-past with baby-future. Here's an abridge of what she said. Isn't it gorgeous?

Having Theo makes tangible the fact that my life has kept -- and still keeps -- moving forward, and I know more concretely now that I'm not stuck in an interminable spiral of grief. But I also think of the gifts Annika gave me, all that I learned from her life. Having and losing Annika made me into the mother that Theo has, probably a different mother than Annika would have had.

I like to think she gave him the gift of a better mother: a mother who not only loves him the way all mothers love their children but who also understands the enormity and the preciousness of his unique life. Everything changed when she died. Annika's mother probably would have felt torn between motherhood and career; Theo's mother doesn't question his supremacy. Annika's mother would have been impatient with all the not-sleeping and night-waking; Theo's mother thinks mere exhaustion is a small price to pay for his well-being. Annika's mother might too often have listened to her head more than her heart; Theo's mother won't make that mistake.

I know, I know. It's about the most poetically lovely thing a person could possibly say. Now, had this come from one of those pink-n-lavender grief pamphlets, it probably would've gone in one ear and out the other. But as it is, this one came from a trusted friend who I happen to know shares the same disdain for frilly sappy things as I do. And she's a lawyer, for God's sake; a real honest-to-goodness lawyer with an analytical head on her shoulders. You can always trust lawyers, right? ;-)

It got me wondering, though: will my experience be the same? That is, will Zachary's death make me into a better mother for this next kid coming up, or at least hopefully coming up, provided he starts kicking with gusto again so I don't inadvertently kill him with the anxiety-chemicals oozing from my mind?

I hope so. I wondered that today, on and off. Just another odd thing that may or may not have contributed to my funk de jour.

* * *

Anyway, I'm outtie and off to look up chocolate-dipped sugar cookie recipes. Seems like an appropriate thing to make.

Pregnancy After Stillbirth: It's Complicated

2010-01-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC Mommy-os, Daddy-os and Inquisitive Guests!

Wouldn't ya know: it's complicated.

Just to recap: this past Monday, Dr. C pulled her chair up really close to mine so that she and Kevin and I were sitting in a tight little pow-wow triangle, as though we were about to sing the kumbaya song. She held our 32-week fetus' ultrasound pictures in the air and said - looking mostly at me - "you're having a normal pregnancy, and I don't anticipate any problems."

She seemed solemn with her brows furrowed, like she was willing me to believe her - probably because of the utterly flippant, dismissive, shoulder-shrugging attitude I've had about this whole thing since I saw the pink plus-sign last July. I could hardly even handle her intense eye contact, at times fighting the urge to stare down at my feet. I told her it was easier - if not more fun altogether - to act like my inner KuKd-goth-tatooed self than to be brave and dorky enough to embrace this pregnancy, to believe. She nodded like she got it and asked if I was happy now.

Are ya happy now? (insert loud Italian New-Yorker grandmother voice) Ya got whatcha wawnted! No mowa complainin' outta yous! Now quit-cha cryin' and go eatcha meatballs!

I could've responded with my usual muted cynicism: well, I will be when the baby actually gets here. If he gets here!

But that gets old after a while. I feel like people get tired of cynicism when it's tossed out too liberally, unthinkingly - when it becomes your entire mode of operation, as it's become mine these past few years. So I indulged Dr. C with a big fat YEAH! THIS IS AWESOME NEWS! She seemed relieved.

Admittedly, I smiled my way through the rest of the day and the day after that, feeling light and airy with a prance in my step. I was happy! How could I not be? Buoyed by this newly resounding assurance of a baby on the way. Even Kevin - earthy, serious, quiet Kevin - seemed lighter all of a sudden, and later I saw that he'd bookmarked a website for car seats. Always thinking ahead, that man. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still happy, relieved.

But it's not all straight-up candy-colored joy, oddly enough. That's what I'm sayin': it's complicated. Pregnancy after loss, that is.

Complicated.

Today and yesterday, after getting over my honeymoon-period of relief, I started feeling oddly as though a wide hole had been ripped open inside my soul by Dr. C's calm proclamation of normalcy, this vague weight of something pressing down on my heart. Anxiety? Depression? Sadness? Some mix of all of those things?

I sort of likened it to more to homesickness, the dreadful sort that I used to get at summercamp, like this feeling of missing something, maybe losing something and grasping to get it back. When I didn't gush about Obama's wonderfulness with characteristic enthusiasm after his State of the Union speech last night, Kevin asked what was wrong.

"I dunno," I said. "I don't know what to do with all this...normalcy. What am I supposed to brood about now?"

He chuckled - we both did. It's been a broody three years of KuKd, and to be told with such certainty, such eye contact - BY A REAL DOCTOR - that "this is a normal pregnancy," well, it takes away my "brooding cloak" so it's just out of reach. I've been wearing that screw-you-and-screw-babies attitude like a big bulky sweater since way back when. July 2006, to be exact. I started feeling naked without it, like letting go of an old friend.

But there's more slipping through my fingers like dry sand, and I'm finding myself this week trying to hold onto it: that KuKd identity and experience that have become so engrained in me these past few years. It's whole invisible universe - that blog-o-world and real-o-world of men and women who have been there before. I'm familiar with it. I enjoy it here. It's like a big secret club for cool kids. I've liked being in this world, even though my reason for being here was so god-awful, as all of our reasons are. It's not that easy to just let go like that, leaping out of one world, one whole identity, and into another: live-baby world.

See what I mean? Complicated.

The thing is, the very fact of being knocked up started pushing me out of this known, loved world a long time ago. I was oblivious to this fact until I received the brutally honest e-mail on this post:

"Now you're pregnant, and I feel so fucking alone. I've lost my misery mentor."

I've thought about that ever since. It troubles me, disturbs me, and makes me feel oddly alienated - like I'm in between worlds in this silent vacuum space. Just ask Kevin, who's heard me babble about it. It makes me want to grab onto the rich universe of baby loss that I know so damn well - of the brave KuKd mommas and daddas who live there, of books and blogs and support groups, of hospitals and tubes and machines and coffins, of ashes and pictures and candles, of poems and flowers and treasured locks of baby hair, of little black footprints on parchment paper, of boxes of Kleenex ever-present at the bedside, of Empty Cradle, Broken Heart sitting dog-eared on the bookshelf, of coveted photographs of little dead babies representing the children we all imagined they would become.

Just grab onto that world with both hands like a golfball-sized globe, and keep it in my pocket forever.

That's what's on my mind this week: how to do that, even as another little globe - a pastel-colored universe of new mommyhood- comes hurtling at me while I stand here blinded like a deer in headlights.

It's Cool

2010-01-25T17:54:00.000-08:00

Quick filler news-byte:

EEEEEE!!! Somebody pinch me please.

Regarding today's earlier post (see below): all is cool on the ultrasound front. Even the lab-coat-clad technicians were smiling. KuKd gals in this "pregnancy-after-loss" category like me, well, we take what we can get. Little things - little words like "normal" - get us all pumped up and make us blast Jay-Z in the living room and shake our butts. Which I did - or started to do - until I just about injured myself. It simply astounds me that the word "normal" can appear on a KuKdx3 gal's chart. Amazes me, really. We've done nothing to prepare for this baby - zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. What do we do with all this unexpected...normalcy?

I might still make a pie this week anyway, AND have that KuKd goth dance party with the nipple piercing station in the corner. If this baby really comes into the world, I need to figure out how to keep Zachary alive in my body, mind, soul, household at the same time. My history of baby-death still weaves itself in and out of me like a black ribbon, not to ever be shed or let to, even as cautious hope for new life creeps in. So they need to coexist: that past, this future.

But that's a whole 'nother post.

And now...PIE!

Chugging 7-Up

2010-01-25T10:40:00.000-08:00

Howdy!

I'm told the fetus is the size of a jicama, whatever that is.

Special ultrasound in a few hours hours with the smart lab-coat clad people. It's a "fetal heart echo," actually. That's where they rub KY Jelly on my tummy and zoom into fetus' little beating heart to make sure the beat is so loud and strong that it would echo off the Grand Canyon walls if given the opportunity. These are university bigwigs, not just ordinary doctors! I'm like this scientific experiment to them: Ooooh! Aaaaah! Can't you hear it? Potential for something freakily, weirdly, unprecedentedly awful to happen! A possible slide show presentation for the new medical students, something to study and ponder!

They will all be disappointed today, I'm sure: disappointed by my kicking little jicama's uncanny (and boring) good health. The horns will make that sound of a joke gone bad: wah-wahhhhhhh. I saw it in my oatmeal this morning: a happy face made of swirling ridges of hot oats, warm milk flowing in those rivulets and sending me cosmic messages of optimism.

However, in case their secret wish for something exciting comes true - that is, if today doesn't go 100% pristine awesome, I've brainstormed some possible ways to spend the rest of the afternoon:

-Shouting at that church marquis near our house, the one that always says something about "God's plan:" Hey God! Are you listening? Your plan sucks nuts. Please review, revise, and resend.

-Go on a frenetic baking spree, rolling out pie crusts with jerky hand motions. No responsibility accepted for any snot or tears that end up in my pie filling.

-Organizing a spontaneous KuKd goth dance party in the basement: black attire and heavy eyeliner required, nipple-piercing station in the corner, candles flickering.

-Paint the living room black.

-Take the rest of my sick leave, tell Kevin he's quitting, and buy round-trip tickets to the farthest, coolest European city - someplace with cobbled narrow roads and bustling squares, where we can sit on bench and eat Nutella-slathered baguette with reckless abandon.

-Throw pies at people's faces.

* * *

I'm guzzling Seven-Up today for heartburn. It's amazing how good a bit of fizzy, sugar-infused, tooth-rotting, arm-fat-generating soda pop can make you feel.

The Stillbirth Fear Factor

2010-01-21T16:17:00.001-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC Colleagues and Inquisitive Guests!

How much fear can the brain really hold? I mean, doesn't it seem like there must be a limit? Aren't humans optimistic by nature? Don't we have to be? If our brains didn't have a natural saturation point for fear, wouldn't our heads fill up with it and explode? Surely that's exactly what would happen.

It would be so cliche of me, so much like a worn-out doormat, for me to talk about post-knocked-down anxieties. Who needs to hear what everyone already can imagine? I mean, yeah. Obviously, obviously, if something bad happens to you repeatedly, you're going to be afraid it will happen again. I don't know if it's true, but I imagine tsunami survivors being afraid of living near the shore, burn victims afraid of fire, cancer survivors afraid of...I don't know...plastics and pesticides and lumpy things beneath their skin.

Which means the fact that I had an "afraid day" today - or, not a whole afraid day, but a day peppered with "afraid moments" - doesn't seem all that newsworthy. That would be like announcing that it rained on a winter day in Seattle. If I tell anyone at all that I'm experiencing a twinge of anxiety, it's like: "well of COURSE you are!" Nobody is surprised by this inevitible fact.

But I don't take post-KuKd anxiety so lightly, like it's this fluffy little "given" in life that of course will occur. I don't like fear at all, don't like to revel in it or talk about it. I worry sometimes that this dismissive attitude toward fear - the fact that I would rather talk about chocolate chip cookie bars and banoffee pies on my blog than spout off about my fears - might come across as flippant and annoying to the KuKd'ers who read this blog, that somehow I'm disrespecting Mother Nature by not showing enough public fear. Not that I know jack about religion, but I get the sense that you're supposed to act afraid around God, that fear is a sign of respect and submission.

My problem with expressing fear is twofold.

First, there's the huge force of optimism that makes up my core being and constantly pushes outward. Look, I'm a basically happy-ass person, and still am. Maybe if I were still the brooding fake-goth chick I was in high school, I'd be able to accept my fear a bit better, and not shove it down like nasty bile. But the truth is, I come from a family of optimists. We laugh things off, shrug things off, make light of situations. Maybe it's an Irish thing; who knows. Really, our whole society is one of optimism, when you think about it, and perhaps that's where I got this trait. And truthfully, although this persistent American optimism annoyed the shit out of me when I lost the babies, I feel ultimately more relieved than not by this pervasive candy-like spirit of joy in our culture and in our family.

Second, there's the fact that post-KuKd fear - specifically this late-term-in-pregancy fear that comes after stillbirth - is one of the worst and most intense feelings of terror that it basically isn't something I can allow to stick around for long. It's more than most people can handle or really understand, unless you've been through something horrendous. It goes back to that fear-saturation point in the brain: this sort of fear is so damned potent, that it fills up my brain instantly to where my head can't hold any more, and I have no choice but to brush it immediately off like a monster's green hand resting on my shoulder. No time to wallow in this fear, or talk about it, or pull it apart and analyze it. Just shove it off and say good riddance.

Today it happened a few times, these afraid moments, which I can only describe like a loud, dark freight train roaring in my ears, coming at me with bright and disorienting lights. Literally, that's basically what happens. I'm sitting there innocently peeing, or typing an e-mail message, and I get the sense that something's wrong. That a heart attack happened inside, that Monday's ultrasound is going to reveal something awful, that people in white lab coats will file into the room and look at me with grave expressions, glancing at their clipboards and explaining in dry medical terminology why everything's fucked.

God, I never used to be able to imagine such a thing happening, but now I can with great ease. It really wouldn't be all that odd for it to happen, given my luck in the baby-making department. But what's the use of imagining such things, dwelling on that fear, revelling in the seering roar and white lights of that freight-train-like fear, talking about it here?

Nothin.' So I suppress it down and keep going in my optimistic way, going through life, letting the genetic/inherent/cultural happiness take over. It isn't hard, because - like I said - I'm basically a happy person.

Today was just an inordinately, weird-ish, freight-train like day. Must have been the Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast - that's the only variable I can think of that was a bit different from the past few weeks.

:-)

KuKd Bitch in the Kitch

2010-01-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

Hello, Kitchen Adventurers!

Ready for a three-part, attention deficit-disorder-inducing post? Here we go.

Part 1: Blah Blah Blah

First, please bear with me for a bit of housekeeping before we get to this mad KuKd bitch in the kitch. This past month, I've gotten not one, not two, but three - count'em - polite requests for a "more organized blog list" for the newly knocked down and infertility-fighters. Three requests! From three different people! That's enough to me to make my brain go: pattern. Me sense pattern.

Now, if I could fuel myself up on coffee with unfettered abandon like in the good old days, I would go out and search for cool blogs on my own and make this crazy organized list of them here. But as it is, I'd rather make it easy on myself and sluggish-feeling brain (and I really do need help with this, since - in a rushed initial attempt to organize a more comprehensive blog list on my own, I inadvertently deleted my old one).

To this end: if you have a blog or website that you would like listed on my Knockalicious Blogs list so that interested readers can find you (preferably related to KuKd/IF/TTC, because that's the coolest kind of blog there is, but I'll also consider blogs that are otherwise just plain cool), please post a comment to this post including:

1) the name of your blog and its URL (web address)
2) a 1-2 sentence description of your blog and why it's cool

This will help me get the list up and running, and everyone will feel that the world is a more organized place than it really is.

* * *

Good, on to the more interesting - and hopefully sympathy-generating - part:

Part 2: KuKd Bitch in the Kitch Making Banoffee Pie

This weekend, K and I rented a vacation house on the cold, blustery Washington seashore with a bunch of lovely friends from work. There was blissfully little to do except cook, eat, nap, play games, go for strolls, cook, and eat some more.

Did I mention cooking and eating? Oh yeah, we did that too. And what better time to try out some new recipes than while sequestered in a rad house with a rad kitchen and six friends? So I launched into a few culinary adventures over the weekend. Actually, one was more mishap than adventure (Food and Wine Magazine can kiss my large butt!!) but I'll save the most frustrating for last.

Saturday night was the banoffee pie - a decadent concoction of bananas, toffee, whipped cream and toasted sugared almonds - which I originally read in a cookbook by this obscure culinary figure:

Recognize that boyish face? Those eyes? That hair?

Jamie Oliver is the name - and hair product is the game. Anyone who puts that much effort into looking like he puts no effort into his hair deserves some recognition. He's a hipster chef, too - the kind whose recipes involve throwing haphazzardly measured ingredients into bowls and kettles like we're all in some culinary mosh pit together, baking scones to the beat of the Sex Pistols. And finally, he's a Brit - which means he must have a British accent - which is on my list of keen and wonderful things.

Anyway, I got obsessed with his banoffee pie recipe several years ago, and vowed to one day produce it. Which I did, this very weekend. Now, his recipe begins innocently with a few cans of sweetened condensed milk:

Note the grave warning on the label:

But alas, Jamie Oliver - with his fuck-all-conventions attitude toward both his hair and his cooking - told me to ignore that warning!

Ignore the label, and boil the cans unopened for three hours , the recipe says, reminding me briefly of that kid in 7th grade who tried to get me to drop acid with him behind the convenience store (for the record, I did not). Boil the cans and your sweetened condensed milk will morph into dark, carmelly dulce de leche: the base of your banoffee pie! But don't ever, ever let the water boil down, and be sure to let the cans cool COMPLETELY after they boil. Because if a single microscopic nanometer of tin can gets exposed to the air during the boiling process, or if the cans aren't cool when you open them, they will EXPLODE all over your face and kitchen, killing everything and everyone in sight!

Yeah. The recipe basically says that. But I proceeded with caution, because Jamie Oliver is cool, and I want to be like him. So I began my tin-can boiling process, while Tebow - in his infinite doggy-wisdom - watched me from afar, sending me mental urges to think before I do this. I nodded and told him I appreciated his concern, but this was one risk I had to take if I was ever going to get to my banoffee pie.

So I did it, and - three hours of rapid boiling and a cautious ten hours of cooling time later, POOF: I had what Jamie had promised. Three cans of delicious, brown-sugary dulce de leche! Toffee, I guess you could call it:

I felt like the baddest KuKd bitch on the planet!

Next, I made a pastry crust of butter, flour and egg yokes, pressing it into a special fluted pan that I bought just for this occasion. On went a thickly slathered layer of my death-defying, dangerously-produced toffee, followed by sliced bananas and fresh whipped cream. The whipped cream was kissed with a scant tablespoon of strong brewed coffee as Jamie suggested, giving it a very slightly mocha-ish taste.

Then came the icing on the cake, so to speak: a generous sprinkle of almonds that had been rinsed in water, tossed with powdered sugar, and toasted in the oven until golden:

BOO-YA. My banoffee pie. Here it is, mid-consumption:

* * *

Part 3: KuKd Bitch in the Kitch Making Doomed Sandwiches from Hell (aka Food and Wine Magazine can Suck It!)

By Sunday at the beach house, I was feeling confident in my culinary, Jamie-Oliver-ish know-how. So I decided to give my second most-obsessed-over recipe a try - these awesome rectangular icecream sandwiches from Food and Wine magazine:

Look how cool and stackable they are, what with the fudge stripe down the middle! I could see everyone biting into them with amazement, wondering how I'd managed such a feat. And the recipe made them look so easy, like you could do these blindfolded.

It began with a package of break-n-bake cookies. I opted for the au natural variety, free of chemical preservatives, as my contribution to everyone's personal health:

These got pressed into baking dish. For the record - and this is important - nowhere in this recipe was there any mention of applying GREASE to the baking dish. So, having come down off my wild-n-crazy rule-breaking spree with Jamie Oliver, I stuck to the rules this time, and did not apply any grease.

Baked'em, and out they came, looking golden delicious. I was certain that all was going well.

Of course (and here's where those fools over at Food and Wine can suck it), the recipe made it sound so wonderfully simple to flip the cookie rectangle outward, causing it to land in a neat rectangle on the counter. But it simply wasn't so:

BASTARDS! My confidence rapidly falling, the cookie rectangle stuck like a piece of glued-on cement, I had to resort to drastic cookie-excavation methods.

"Parchment paper would've worked well," said my friend M, watching with borderline amusement.

"Take your twenty-minutes-too-late assvice and shove it!" I thought to myself, hardly in the mood for advice and retroactive solutions. What I really wanted was some verbal confirmation of how crappy and deceiving this recipe was.

After piecing it back together in the pan like the great Pangea continent, I grumpily moved on to the next step - which was to press a bunch of vanilla icecream down onto the cookie layer, cover it in plastic wrap and freeze it:

Next came a layer of fudge topping - followed by another hour in the freezer.

Then, my fudge-icecream-cookie-layered-Pangea-continent had to be sliced into two halves, and sandwiched together into one gigantic hunk of frozen chocolaty layered goodness:

Finally, it was time to slice this hard-arse brick into smaller icecream sandwiches, which could (and maybe even would, if the bastards over at Food and Wine had any technical writing skills whatsoever) look like the lovely stacked up sandwiches in the orginal recipe photo.

M, the assvice giver himself, found twisted amusment in my crabby attempts to stab the gigantic cookie bar, and snatched up my camera to document the carnage:

TAH-DAH: my icecream sandwiches.

A far cry from the recipe picture (note to Food and Wine: thanks for making me feel inferior to the whole world!), but at least I could count on K to eat one with a smile on his unshaven face.

Redemption, I guess.

* * *

Arright, get this KuKd bitch in the kitch your blog URL and a 1-2 liner about what it is and why it's cool!

Bitch, Glitch and Switch

2010-01-12T19:19:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/IF'ers and Inquisitive Guests!

The Bitch

It was exciting to discover a few days ago that someone had found my blog with the search terms "knocked up bitch."

I had to assume that my blog wasn't quite the thing they were looking for, if you know what I mean. Nonetheless, they did stick around for several minutes (it's almost frightening, the information I have access to). I wonder if this particular Internet-trawler learned anything new in the process, if they liked what they saw here, if they came away with a new view of us knocked-up bitches. If the titillating topic of pregnancy loss can spark even the faintest interest in what I presume to be a fat, horny middle-aged guy who looks like the stapler dude from Office Space, well, the entire KuKd communty can be proud. Right? Can't we?

Warning to my IF/TTC peeps: there's a bit of baby talk here today. Just some musings, some gross bodily things. I say this with full understanding: who in crap's name am I to complain about anything pregnancy-related? At least I'm pregnant at all. Touche.

But things happen with this now 30-week-pregnancy like with any other pregnancy - boring things, commonplace things, non-KuKd-related things - as much as I'd like to think my heightened KuKd status makes this pregnancy somehow different and more interesting than the norm. And sometimes I get the urge to spout off about those things here, even knowing it's not fun for everyone to read about. So my apologies in advance to my pregnancy-sensitive sistas.

The Glitch

There was a bit of a scare this past week - some weird cramping and clear, amnio-like discharge going on. There, I said it! DISCHARGE! Kevin absolutely positively loves it when I say that word - discharge - especially when preceded by "vaginal."

VAGINAL DISCHARGE! KEVIN, COME CHECK IT OUT!

It's almost as much of a turn-on as when I say HEMORRHOID!

KEVIN, MY HEMORRHOID IS BOTHERING ME!

(which I announced loudly from the bedroom yesterday morning while blotting my daily torrential nosebleed with an already-used Kleenex)

Poor Kevin, with his nosebloody, hemorrhoidy, vaginal dischargy, blood-engorged, gassy (there's that, too), extremely-vocal-about-all-of-the-above wife of whale-like proportions. Please send him flowers or tickets to March Madness.

Anyway, the cramps. I called the consulting nurse to relay my changing bodily symptoms, and was ordered to come in for a strangely named "non-stress test." The "non-stress test," which - ironically - is stressful just like any other procedure involving checking the aliveness of one's fetus, requires hooking suction-cuppy things up to my belly and listen for fetal activity and peering into my cervix. All of this is to make sure I'm not going into early labor.

(I was secretly hoping I was, in fact, going into early labor - so that I might be prescribed indefinite "bed rest," which - in my twisted fantasy world - involves lounging around in my pajamas for two months and watching movies while Kevin feeds me ice cream)

Of course, I was fully braced for catastrophe as I drove to the clinic for my stressful non-stress test, with Kevin and my mother calling me at regular intervals to check in. That's where KuKd colors pregnancy a slightly different shade than just pure pastel-rainbow: more like a black and gray experience with swaths of crimson-fear.

But everything turned out to be fine, so I was given a pat on the head and sent home, look around in wonderment and think to myself: wow! Things actually seem miraculously, statistically significantly, counter-intuitively okay! Now what do I do with myself?

* * *

The Switch

I'm making the switch!

I was trying to remember what commercial(s) that's from. Some cable company? Cell phone? Diet plan? Anyway, I'm making it the switch.

Any of you who have ever lost a pregnancy, and then experienced subsequent pregnancies, will get what I mean here: during that subsequent pregnancy, you become like this high-risk specimen for the medical community to examine and monitor and write copious notes about. You feel dully afraid just about all the time, and your immediate family - females (well, mothers) especially - feed off your dull fear and cycle it back in your direction, spinning you into an even bigger ball of fear. And you suck up that extra attention like a needy attention whore - for a while anyway.

But then you start to feel tired of being a needy attention whore. You start getting bored with your own drama. If someone suggests another ultrasound, you feel yourself nodding a bit too quickly in agreement. If someone asks you questions and studies your charts, you soak it up like good rum punch, reveling in the spotlight of being such a high-risk specimen that smart people are worried about. And you start to get irritated with yourself, with this identity you've taken up.

Alas - for me, anyway - the novelty wore off about two months ago. I really started wanting to make the switch over to normal knocked-uppage. That is: back to thinking, talking, acting, and being treated like an ordinary pregnant gal with ordinary concerns - not like this big huge walking web of emotion and anxiety and potential dead-baby-ness.

So, after my December ultrasound, I told my Fetal Heart Specialist Guru Doctor that I was ready to MAKE THE SWITCH: the switch back over to my regular nice-lady doctor, the switch to the normal pregnancy track from here on out. Basically that means fewer visits to the doctor, fewer screenings, more relaxation. It means - on paper anyway- that everyone switches over to the mentality of "Monica is a normal pregnant person" instead of "Monica is high-risk specimen."

So we've all made the switch together: me, Kevin, my doctors. And ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh... I feel better already.

God help me if this one gets effed up between now and nine weeks from now.

Amateur Stillbirth Art

2010-01-08T16:17:00.001-08:00

Greetings Discerning Art Enthusiasts,

Twenty-four hours after the baby died, Kevin and I were lying on our sides on the basement floor with our fingers interlocked, staring at each other like shell-shocked soldiers. Technically I was still pregnant, I guess. The big belly was there with a six-pound something inside it. But that six-pound something was a lifeless, mysterious lump. What the HECK does one do in a state like that? Watch TV? Bake cookies? Weed in the garden?

Well, different things.

For K, it was a basement-improvement rampage: racing to Home Depot, dropping several thousand dollars on new sub-flooring and wall paint and light fixtures. He became like this crazed home-remodeling-madman-on-crack. Or speed. Basically I just sort of sat there with my pregnant-dead-baby-stomach-lump and watched him work. How could I argue with channeling one's grieving energy into productive activities that boosted our home value?

For me, in the days immediately following Zach's cold delivery into the world, it was standing beneath a bare light-bulb in flannel pajamas, slathering acrylic paints onto gigantic stretched canvases. K - bless his heart- was the one who had prompted me to dive back into the paints, which I hadn't touched in a year or so. He suggested I create some pieces to embellish our soon-to-be-remodeled-basement, and even picked up some canvases for me at the art store.

I worked fervently for a full day as Kevin hammered in sub-floor tiles with just as much fervor. We were both in some kind of weird, trance-like state, our hands working, our minds focused on the task at hand. We didn't play any music, because all music - Janes Addiction, especially, but really any music at all - was making me cry. Just worked silently like robots. I distinctly recall throwing paint in every direction - slopping, slathering, pelting it on without regard for technique or boundaries or whatever mess I might be creating. It was like a fifth grade art project to the nth degree.

By the time I'd finished all my paint-slinging, about twenty hours after I'd started, I was covered in blues and reds and oranges, damp paper-towels all over the floor with speckles of paint on them, cups of color-tinted water everywhere. We ordered - and I STILL remember this with crystal clarity - pepperoni pizza from Domino's with a coupon. It was almost ten at night. The floor was done, and K and I worked together to hang my new "stillbirth art" on the wall.

I felt better, kind of, about the world - for the moment, anyway.

* * *

I haven't thought about those paintings much since then. They've been hanging in the basement since the baby died, sort of neglected and forgotten. It's not like I'm a trained artist, so everything I produce is totally blocky, choppy and amature-ish - not something I would hang on the main floor above the fireplace mantel.

But they're on my mind again now as Kevin begins "stage two" of our big basement remodel, which requires us to strip the basement walls down and clean out shop. I'm thinking about these paintings, wondering what to DO with them. Keep them? If so, where? Give them away? Store them?

For now, I'm taking pictures of them and just thinking about them. They're dated August 25th, 2007 - the week that we lost Zach. Which - in my mind - makes them bona fide "amateur stillbirth art," if there is such a thing:

I wonder what a psychiatrist would say about them, if anything. Why do we do the things we do when we lose someone or something we love? Why did I paint those particular things, with those particular colors? Fish? Flowers? Butterflies? They seem...happy to me now, like this sort of jubilant kiddie-art that might go into a child's bedroom. Why would THAT come out of me and not something dark and macabre, like skulls on a black background?

What sorts of things do other stillbirth-mommies paint? And why? I guess I'm just curious about art as a healing thing, why and how we do it, where in our brain it comes from, what it says about us.

I wish I had some deep psycho-analytical answer, but dude. You know I don't. :-) Right now the paintings are stacked up on the floor while my dog paces around them suspiciously and sniffs them. Maybe he'll come up with the answer using that poodle-westie nose of his.

Stillbirth: What Ya Lose

2010-01-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Guests and Regulars...

I've got it! I get it! Everything makes sense now! It's taken me...what...two-and-a-half years. But I think I'm there, finally.

Today I was slowly swimming laps at the community center pool, not unlike a gigantic manatee pursuing a floating head of cabbage. Of course, there isn't much to do while swimming except...well...swim. And watch wavy blue lines go by. And think.

It was during this prolongued bout of thinking and wavy-blue-line-watching that I realized with certainty what it actually MEANS to get knocked down, particularly in later stages of a pregnancy. I'm talking specifically about stillbirth: death of a creature big enough to create noticeable spasms of movement, make you look and feel like a fatso, and cause you to expel a "pee pellet" everytime you laugh or sneeze hard.

Now, I realize how absurd that sounds. Any old dumb-ass can look up "stillbirth" in the dictionary. The Center for Disease Control has a pretty sweet definition, which lumps stillbirth and miscarriage together:

"'Fetal death' means death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy and which is not an induced termination of pregnancy. The death is indicated by the fact that after such expulsion or extraction, the fetus does not breathe or show any other evidence of life, such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles."

Fair enough.

Yet, despite such scientifically graphic definitions, I never felt like I quite understood what it meant to lose a baby, or a fetus, or whatever - and why it was so sad, so baffling, so destructive to my psyche. All of my KuKd experiences have felt like a great big broom swooping down from the sky and smacking me and Kevin upside the face, leaving us standing there like dazed and confused imbiciles, stung and wondering what the hell had just happened.

I mean yeah, something died. I got that part. A fetus at four months. A blighted ovum - a ball of nothingness. A baby-like entity at 33 weeks. But what do you do, what or who are you supposed miss, when you happened to take a more measured and cautious (maybe old-fashioned?) approach to pregnancy, keeping excitement under wraps until the purported due date? Didn't personify the unborn fetus? Didn't find out the gender? Didn't think about names and spout them off to the world? Didn't blog about his/her gestational progress? Didn't get ultrasounds every month or whatever to watch it kick? Voted pro-choice, which I did and still do (there! I said it!)?

That was me, all of the above. "I miss my baby" just sounded simplistic to my own ears, insufficient. There wasn't any rationale for "missing the baby" to add - because it's not like I could say something like, "I miss his laughter!" or "I miss the way his poopy diaper smelled!" How could I have known what his poopy diaper might have smelled like (not that I couldn't muster a reasonable guess)? Even suddenly affixing a name to him - as though he and I were old friends - somehow felt weird to my hyper-rationalizing mind.

So, stillbirth for me was confusing and hard to think about, and absurdly difficult to explain it to others in a way that made sense. I wanted to tell my friends why it sucked so bad, but the words never came. So I just resigned myself to feeling crazy for a while.

* * *

BUT I GOT IT NOW! As of 12:26 today at Helene Madison Pool! It dawned on me with crystal clarity, a working understanding of stillbirth, a confirmation - finally after all this time - of what it is about getting Knocked Down that brings a person so very far...well...down.

This realization comes from my now having whatever a seven-month pregnant woman actually has that could be lost, other than a simple developing infant, and imagining with a dry throat what it would be like to lose that "thing" again. I can think about it more clearly than before, understand it better. It was today in the swimming pool as I slogged my way through the crawl-stroke that I began to take stock of what that enigmatic "thing" actually IS, analyze it, define it.

If I were to lose this baby now, it wouldn't be simply "death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception," as the Center for Disease Control wisely phrases it. Nuh-nuh no. I mean yeah - scientifically it's an accurate definition, but wholly lacking in depth and substance, and dismissive of the more intangible things that evaporate when a late-term baby dies. Now I get why definitions like that didn't do much for me back in my darkest days, and didn't help my friends and family understand our circumstance any better.

My swimming-pool epiphany began like this. If the spastic little ball of movement in my belly were to disappear today, here's what I would lose besides the spastic little critter himself:

1) The imagined child I envision him becoming. It changes regularly, but right now, the "vision de jour" is of a toddler with tousled brown hair and freckles, pin-striped overalls like the sort a 1920s railroad worker might wear, a red shirt underneath, and a really straight nose like Kevin's. He's a nice kid, the one that I picture. He respects our dog. He likes to color and look for bugs in our back yard, and he can sing on-key and hit a Whiffle ball with a plastic red bat. And the kid can make noise, too; I heard his little-boy squeals down at the shallow end of the pool today, which was sectioned off from the lap-lanes for "family swim time."

2) The imagined life I have laid out for him. It's stretched before us like a red carpet. I saw it clearly as the wavy blue lines went by in the swimming pool today. It involves lots of overseas trips and very early introduction of spicy foods, because the last thing I want is finicky child who only eats french fries. It involves being surrounded by awesome grandparents and aunts and uncles who channel love in his direction, and messy art projects in the kitchen. It involves camping and hiking and sports, because no son of Kevin's will go un-trained in basic ball-throwing and ball-catching skills and fire-making skills. It involves all that and then some, a thousand little details that I can spin like yarn and exaggerate inside my head like a compulsive story-teller.

3) The imagined ways it will change our marriage. Maybe this is all hogwash. But in my fantasy future, a child only brings me and Kevin closer together, our "team" made stronger by this sudden hardcore project to manage. We start lining up babysitters as soon as we can and going on regular date-nights without the kid, because having our cherished time at the tavern to lean into one another over cheap beers can only make our child more secure in himself and his family, more awestruck at the strength of his parents' friendship.

4) The opportunity to love a human more than I ever thought possible. What more can I say about this? A real living child provides an opportunity to love in a bigger, better way.

Oh, there's probably more that could be added. But already, that's a lot - isn't it? And once I took inventory of all that lose-able stuff, I thought in wonderment:
WOW. I lost all that? And not just me, but gadzillions of OTHER dead-baby mommas around the world have lost it too, and are losing it at this very moment, and will lose it tomorrow and the next day and on and on into the future, as long as fetuses happen and fetuses die?

Ah-HA! That's why stillbirth is so surreally, achingly difficult. Letting go of the physical dead baby, described so aptly by Center for Disease Control - now that's the easy part. Who is going to complain about lightening a 6-pound load off one's torso? Not me. It's letting go of the imaginary part - the hopeful, fairytale-spun future associated with that fetus - that's the most vomit-worthily difficult. For me anyway, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life...letting that go. And anyone who has to go through that letting go, well, deserves a trophy on the fireplace mantel or a badge of honor at the very least. Somebody should start that as an international custom.

Man, if only I'd had that nice, tidy explanation to e-mail to all my friends during the lowest days of my knocked-downage! Maybe it would help the world "get it" better. Or maybe it would only leave them more confused. :-) I'm good at confusing people, including myself.

33 Years, 33 Pages

2009-12-27T06:15:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC Regulars and Guests!

Nancy Pearl, a Seattle-area book reviewer and general literary guru, has a great rule for deciding how much of a chance a person should give a book: read until you reach the page number of your current age (in my case, a whopping 33), and if you're not into the book by then, toss it.

On the one hand, I really love that rule because it gives me a valid, mathematical excuse for giving up on a book without feeling like the Attention-Deficit-Disordered-Slacker that I am (an excuse that even Nancy Pearl - with her smart, aging librarian-voice - approves of!). On the other hand, I usually can't even make it to the page number of my current age. If a book doesn't grab me by page...oh...five or so, I'm done with it and back to reading Real Simple Magazine again, last-page fluff first and working my way forward to the more serious stuff. Deep, literary stuff, like how to make better use of one's closet space (just don't tell Nancy Pearl about that, please).

Not that I pick up many books to read anyway. Over the last few years on the KuKd track, I've done a lot of filling my life with "mandatory" crap and fictitious deadlines. Like: must create blog! Must sit down to write! Must plan happy hour with friends! Must visit parents! Must socialize dog! Must go lapswimming! Must eat more probiotics! Must, must, must! Which means, I really haven't had much time to kick back and throw myself into something as non-productive and decadent as a nice, juicy novel.

Well, this holiday beach vacation was largely about "flossing my brain," as I called it - that is, shutting down all those imaginary little things that I've felt myself responsible for these past few years, and doing nothing whatsoever. So before heading to Puerto Rico, K and I stocked up on a bunch of used paperbacks for the journey. With great fanfare, I got through three (3) of these decent-sized books - not War and Peace sized but respectable nonetheless - in a week.

Fleetingly, I thought it would be nice to review them here. But I've never been great at reviewing books. That's because, like I said, in order for me to get past page five or so, I have to really, really like the book. The second I stop liking it, that's it - I'm done reading it. Why waste precious life with a mediocre book that may or may not get better? Likewise, if I manage to get through a book at all, it means that of COURSE I like it. Reviewing books on a regular basis, for me, would be like a film or food critic who absolutely loves everything he or she reviews. Not exactly "critical."

Nonetheless, here are my Puerto Rico beach-reads (a few of which are now dog-eared and scattered around Vieques Island for other book-seeking tourists to discover) with a short blurb surrounding each.

Let's start with the bad: Lost and Found, by Carolyn Parkhurst.

Blegh. I got through page five before tossing it into the hotel waste basket - right alongside a couple of used Q-Tips and an empty tube of sunscreen. Yes, my dislike of the first few chapters really was that dramatic. It was the characters - the whole scenario itself - that got on my nerves from the get-go.

In a Nutshell: I've really pushed this one out of my mind, but here's what I vaguely recall in terms of plot: a teenage girl has a baby in her bedroom after having hid the pregnancy from her mother for nine months (either I missed the memo describing how on earth it's physically possible to hide a pregnancy right up until the due date, or this is something that only lithe, skinny young teen girls are able to accomplish). The girl and the mother aren't on the best of terms, needless to say, and they decide to go on a reality TV show together, I suppose as a way to patch up their relationship. This reality TV show involves, from what I can gather, traipsing around the world to do certain somethings in competition against other teams. Don't quote me on that, though, because I hardly read enough to know for sure.

My Highly Critical Evaluation: This book switches back and forth between the mom and daugher's perspectives, which would be fine if the daughter didn't act and talk like a total piss-wad. One of her first lines is something like, "Being in Italy (or wherever) wouldn't be so bad if I weren't on a fucking game show. With my fucking MOM."

Oh boo-hoo.

Maybe she improves in her attitude and general character as the story goes on, her pissy teenage voice quickly became so unbearable that I couldn't even afford her that opportunity to become less irritating. Nope: she blows it early on. Not only that, but the concept of reality TV-style game shows with people roaming the planet in search of secret objects or whatever is so...overdone, so mainstream, so pop-culture-y, that I just wasn't drawn in at all.

Oh, I should add that this book somehow involves parrots. Not sure how parrots come into play, but I sense that they do, somehow, somewhere, some way. Read the book (if you dare) to find out.

* * *

Next: Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi.

In a Nutshell: A bunch of random people living in a small German town before, during, and after World War II have all kinds of wacky drama. The central character is named Trudi, who happens to be a dwarf. I still haven't Googled that term to confirm how a dwarf is different from a midget, or what it actually means to be a dwarf. At any rate, Trudi is a small gal. That much I picked up on. This book has lots of themes and mini-stories woven throughout - Trudi's insecurity with her physical difference being one of the primary elements. There's also some German guilt, some Nazi nastiness, some Jews hiding out in people's cellars, some love triangles, some pregnancies, some sex, some bombs falling on cities, and other things of that nature.

First Few Lines: "As a child, Trudi Montag thought everyone knew what went on inside others. That was before she understood the power of being different. The agony of being different." These lines pulled me in, making her character accessible, her thoughts suddenly universal. Who hasn't felt "different" at times?

Random Line from Page 33, In Relation to Nancy Pearl's Rule: "Her mother smelled like the lobby." This line is actually from the top of page 34, but who cares. I like this concept of people smelling like places. It's the very reason why I can't stand Subway sandwich shops: everything inside of a Subway and within a 100-foot radius (people, tables, food items, napkins, breeze, fire hydrants, trees) smells exactly like the inside of a Subway sandwich shop. Blegh.

My Highly Critical Evaluation: Of course, by virture of having read the whole damn thing, it means - of course - I liked it. Oh, there are probably nuanced little flaws I could pull out if I was feeling really bitchy and critical, but why bother. Overall, I liked it a lot. I really admire fiction writers who can come up with this crazy, harebrained scheme of a tale, complete with all sorts of wacky characters, and develop those characters in a realistic way and make them interact with each other coherently. How do people come UP with this stuff?? A German dwarf-girl hiding Jews in her cellar? There's a lot of interesting historical perspective in here, which was cool. Trudi's character isn't totally lovable all the time, but she keeps it real.

* * *

Moving on, Broken for You, by Stephanie Kallos.

In a Nutshell: Wanda, a young woman with lots of emotional baggage, rents a room from an elderly woman with lots of emotional baggage. They start to open up their emotional baggage and scatter it all over the place, kind of like what all of my belongings from our beach trip still look like, spewed all over the bedroom floor, still wrinkly and salty and unwashed. Shit happens: romances, deaths, car accidents, lots of flashbacks to unsavory times for both Wanda and the elderly woman - and through all this baggage and shit happening, the women manage to forge a deep connection. At least that's kind of what the back of the book suggests.

First Few Lines: Don't know'em, because I left this book on a table next to my empty virgin-Pina-Colada glass at the hotel. No point in carting this one home, because I knew Kevin wouldn't read it. Not that I'd recommend it to him: this is definitely more of a human-relatiohship-ish chick-book, which by now has probably been swept up by some middle-aged woman traveling alone to Puerto Rico in order to find herself.

My Highly Critical Evaluation: I liked it well enough. The writing was solid and filled with amusing human moments. Lots of feelings and emotions, and cool descriptions of sights and sounds and thoughts. The main character, Wanda, annoyed me at times; she just seemed kind of self-centered in a sulky teenage kind of way. It was the kind of book which - unlike Stones from the River - left my head immediately after I'd finished the final page. No lasting residual "ah-ha!" moments or deep philosophical epiphanies. Still, it was a page turner for me, I think largely because the writing was just so pleasant to soak up, and ultimately I wanted to know how the story ended.

* * *

Finally, A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russel.

In a Nutshell: Another World War II-themed story, purely coincidental. A bunch of Jewish refugees sneak over the Alps into northern Italy in order to escape German-occupied France. The central character, sort of, is a Jewish teenager named Claudia. This is another one of those epic tales that spans lots of years during and after the war, with all kinds of other random characters and sub-plots thrown into the mix. Ultimately, the story drifts away from Claudia herself and toward this much larger, more complex web of Italian Jews, Italian Catholics, Nazi fuckheads, Italian resistance fighers, Jewish refugee sympathizers, and others.

First Line: "This is what everybody would remember about his mother: her home was immaculate." Not a bad first line. This type of line, though, always makes me think to myself: I'd better find out pretty dark quickly who this passage is referring to, or I'm going to lose interest. In fact, this information doesn't directly come out, but one can make a fairly educated guess by page two.

Random Line from Page 33, In Relation to Nancy Pearl's Rule: "He limps as quickly as he can through an apartment filled with generations of dusty furniture." Can't you totally picture that? This World War II-era dwelling crammed with large, antique tables and chairs and what-nots, some dude navigating his way through there, trying to avoid smacking right into the sharp wooden corner of a clunky wooden writing desk? I like that kind of detail.

My Highly Critical Evaluation: This book swept me up into another world, and taught me a lot about history. I liked the historical perspective, the epic-saga nature of it, and the constant suspense running throughout every chapter. This was the sort of book that made me talk Kevin's ear off afterward, as though I'd just walked out of a movie theatre and was still in this sort of northern Italian, World-War-II brain fog for the rest of the day.

Oh, and if you read this book, you'll be glad to have the little cheat sheet provided on the first few pages, listing the names of all the charaters and classifying them in various ways - Jewish, Catholic, Italian, German, French, Nazi deserter, Nazi fuckhead, etc. Believe me, this little reference was a life saver for me.

Thwarting Terrorist Attacks With Belly

2009-12-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

Hello Holiday Revelers,

It all started while waiting in line to board a Denver-bound United Airlines jet. We were in Miami, the largest city in Florida, which is where lots of flight schools are located, and where - in the fog of my memory - I vaguely recall the 9/11 hijackers having trained to fly.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

A young Middle Eastern guy who Kevin and I presumed to be Saudi, having taught English to Saudi exhange students in the past and therefore considering ourselves Young-Saudi-Male-Identification-Experts, elbowed his way past everyone en route to the front of the line. He was college-student-ish in jeans and a striped polo shirt half-tucked-in, tousled hair flopping a wee bit over the boyish face.

"Excuse me," he repeated as he passed, looking flustered. "My friend is up there and we're checking in together." Kind of silly, this need to check in "with your friend," but whatever. 'Tis the holiday season, a time of giving and cross-cultural understanding, a time of forgiving others for bumbling ahead to the front of the line.

Still, the fleeting thought crossed my mind: why does he need to sit with his friend? And why so desperately that he's willing to cut in front of everyone else?

But the question swirled away within a few seconds as a cinnamony-sweet waft of Cuban buffet scent hit my nostrils. I knew this would be the last time I'd smell that heartwarming aroma for a while, since not many airports do shredded pork wrapped in plaintain leaves like Miami International.

We arrived at row 21 near the back of the plane, and Kevin began dutifully stuffing our carry-ons into the overhead compartments. As requested, we were each given an aisle seat directly across the lane from one another. Before sitting down, I scanned the faces of our seat-neighbors, bracing myself for what one always must on a nearly four-hour flight: someone overly chatty, sweaty, large, or otherwise invasive of personal/physical space. Generally I'm not an airplane socializer. Nope, I prefer to keep to myself, burying my nose in Sky Mall Magazine and taking a nap, reaching across the aisle to affectionately cajole Kevin every so often.

Lo and behold, seated in the middle of my row - right next to me - was no one other than THAT GUY - the young Middle Eastern dude who had brushed his way up to the front of the line "to be with his friend." And across the aisle, next to Kevin's seat, was a sullen-faced young man dressed in a white, cottony-silky religious-looking outfit with a religious-looking cap on his head. Presumably, "the friend." And obviously Middle Eastern too. And next to him, by the window, was another dark-featured guy - quite possibly, if not plausibly, if not certainly, of Middle Eastern descent too.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Still, my as I lowered my fat, cumbersome self into my seat, I couldn't help but notice my own heart rate picking up a wee bit, my mouth feeling ever so slightly drier than a few seconds earlier. Because all of a sudden, rather than seeing harmless young boy-faces of some studenty-looking guys, here's what I was seeing in row 21:

Three of 'em, with me and Kevin sandwiched in the middle. Hoping to distract myself from what I knew was my own ridiculousness, I nervously examined the barf-bag to assess its true barf-holding capabilities, studying the label. But the vision wouldn't go away, and before I knew it, this vision had morphed into:

All three guys in our row were typing madly into their I-Phones as we sat on the tarmac, awaiting take-off. Texting each other, I thought miserably, plotting their attack, coordinating when and how they would slit my and Kevin's throats before pouncing into the aisle. I wanted to warn Kevin that the dudes next to him might have knives and box-cutters hidden in their jackets, but didn't want to give away my own embarassing paranoia. So I sent him a mental message instead to watch his back, as my hand rose up to my own neck, feeling the skin there. It really wouldn't be hard to cut through that skin.

* * *

In a mad attempt to save myself, I instinctively turned to face the polo-shirted one beside me, hoping to engage him in conversation. My voice sounded tauter, higher, louder than usual to my own ears, my sentences punctuated by occasional nervous giggles.

"Hi! I'm Monica! Where are you from?"

He glanced at me sideways. "Saudi Arabia. But I'm studying here in the U.S."

Uh-huh. I gripped the armrest and swallowed hard. "So, are you, um, traveling by yourself?"

"No, I'm with my friend over there. We're going to Portland." He gestured to the religiously-white-clad kiddo next to Kevin.

"Oh, so not the guy by the window?"

"No. It's just the two of us." Better two of them than three, I thought. From a defense-perspective, anyway.

"That's your husband, right?" he said. "I can switch places with him so you two can be together, if you want." (So I can be closer to my friend, so we can form a more unified attack)

"OH NO," I said a bit too quickly. "This is fine. We prefer aisle seats. So, um, what were you doing in Miami?"

"We were there for a few weeks on vacation." (Intensive flight training?)

"Interesting. So, what's in Portland?"

"Oh, we're students at Portland State University. I'm in the electrical engineering program." (Good for bomb-making?)

"Wowsers! That's fascinating!" By this point, my voice was really loud and brittle in its faux holiday cheer, almost desperate-sounding, and Kevin was giving me odd looks from the top of his magazine. I knew he was wondering what strange social bug had bitten me between now and five minutes ago. Of course, how could he know that I was only using my keen social skills as a weapon, protecting the safety of us, of the baby, of this whole flight, of our country, of our whole damn planet???

"So, um, that Portland weather must be a bit of a shock to your system," I continued. "How're you handling the cold rain?"

"It's not good," he said. "I prefer annoying heat to annoying cold. There are some disadvantages to living in hot climates, though. The heat affects people's moods, and makes everybody angry and irritated all the time. Like, in Saudi Arabia, everybody's angry all the time."

That did it. By this point, nothing he could have said would have sounded un-terrorist-like to me, nothing he could have done would have alleviated the rapidly growing blob of panic in my head. I was certain, almost certain anyway, that we were all about to die. Just then, the fetus began to flail madly inside my belly, as he always does before and during take-off and landing. The baby: my last hope in this game of terrorism-survival.

Acting on some crazed emotional impulse, I suddenly grabbed the Saudi guy's hand and yanked it toward me desite his obvious surprise and resistance, and pressed it firmly against my belly, right below my bra-less boob. "THE HEAT GETS EVERYONE ANGRY?" I said. "WOW! BUT FEEL THIS, RIGHT HERE! THE BABY'S KICKING!"

As if a kicking fetus had anything to do with short tempers in the scorched desert.

The baby went WHOPP right against the Saudi dude's hand and I watched him closely, waiting for him to morph into a human being instead of a turban-wearing, knife-wielding murderer. If a baby's kick couldn't soften up a terrorist, then I was going to officially give up and start praying to the powers that be. The guy's eyes grew wide as a grin spread across his young face.

"Wow!" he said. "I've never felt that before! That's so cool! Is he...do you think he's rotating? In our cuture we say that rotating babies make good leaders."

And WHOPP - another kick right against his palm, and his smile got even bigger. I held his warm hand there with relentless force, pressing mine on top of his. Kevin was staring at me now across the aisle, clearly wondering what on earth had gotten into me.

"Yeah, he's probably rotating," I said. "Maybe he'll turn into a leader, like you say."

And finally, after several strange minutes in this position with the fetus wriggling around spastically inside me, BOOM - the young Saudi man turned into an ordinary harmless college student. Just like that. As my shoulders relaxed, spit filtrating into my mouth again, I released the still-surprised guy's hand, feeling more than a tad bit silly. Feeling like a bit of a shit-head, actually.

I glanced down at the I-Phone still in his hand. There wasn't a half-written text message with the words "knife" and "slit...throat" in there, but a frozen game of solitare. "Actually, yeah," I said. "Let's switch so you can be by your friend."

He smiled and shook my hand. "It was nice talking to you! Thanks for letting me feel the baby - that was awesome!"

I tugged on Kevin's shirt sleeve and we all got up to change seats, Kevin not saying but undoubtedly thinking: what the fuck was THAT all about? I figured we could discuss the whole episode later, in private.

* * *

Fear and prejudice: now I can totally see where it comes from. How it starts, escalates inside our minds to irrational proportions, leads to holocausts and civil wars and bombing abortion clinics, makes whites and blacks gravitate in separate directions. It's like, you get this one impression of a group of people from a single unsavory incident and some media coverage, and suddenly they all become like that. And once you get it in your head that they're all like that, then it's not hard to take every single one of their words and actions and drop it into this preexisting slot inside your mind where stereotypes get confirmed. SEE? I KNEW HE WAS A TERRORIST!

Twenty minutes into the flight, the two Saudi boys, now sitting beside each other, had their headphones on and were watching the movie Elf on the small screen overhead, laughing uproariously like normal college kiddos. This cemented my final, joyful conclusion: we were not about to die .

And: I'm the freakin' weirdo, not them.

To Be on Reality TV

2009-12-22T15:23:00.000-08:00

Hola, Holiday Readers...

First, the superficial: regarding my last post, I rocked it with the two-piece bikini-bikini (not the tankini-bikini). It was fine, except for the mild sunburn on my moonlike belly. I'm not home yet but getting there, with a couple of vacation pictures forthcoming. Man oh man, how I needed this time to lie computer-less on the white beach like a lazy (bikini-clad) whale. Everybody should do it - in fact, I think we should have an agreed-upon two weeks of "blog-cation" per year, during which nobody on the planet is allowed to read or write blogs. Just imagine!

Second, the conversation of the week:

"Primero?" (pointing to belly)

"Si."

Exchange of smiles.

You know, it's just one of those dang questions that doesn't have an answer - and of course I was asked it at least five times. I could go on explaining what I mean, why that question poses such a conundrum, but I know I don't have to - not with most of you. First pregnancy? No. But...first child? As in, do I have any other children? Well, si. And besides: "no" might lead to something like "how many others do you have?", which would lead to...well...you know.

It used to matter so hugely, so achingly, that others knew the full story - even innocent strangers asking innocent questions. But the need to tell all has subsided, I now know how to swallow it down and keep it there, and just give the quick-n-easy answer:

"Si. Esta mi primero."

I'm just not good at being that forthcoming. I've always known there are bigger, stronger, more in-tune-with-themselves women out there who can say more effortlessly: "well, this isn't my first pregnancy - but my other children are in heaven." I mean, how hard can that be? I envy those KuKd mommas who can intertwine past and present so seamlessly, bad with good, death with life. As for me, the few times I've tried being this honest, I wind up feeling self-concious and weird about it.

Not that I don't still crave some kind of strange cosmic "credit" for my KuKd experiences. It's like...do war veterans crave credit for what they've been through? Breast cancer survivors? Survivors of any sort? How do THEY handle their past dirt, those life-changing experiences that make them stronger and more seasoned people?

I told Kevin, life would be easier if I were a reality TV star, or even a character in a book or on the big screen. That way, I could act all non-chalant and dismissive of such questions, issuing a short-n-sweet answer of "si!" without divulging the full, multi-textured truth - but at least my audience would know the real dredges of the story. All those people watching or reading about me would think to themselves, "look how STRONG AND SELFLESS she is! How neatly and tidily she handles her problems - how she just says 'si' to save everybody face. But WE know the truth!"

I'd feel okay with that, just having a big cloud of audience following me around, knowing everything there is to know, giving me credit for stuff. In fact, we might all enjoy that - having a hovering peanut-gallery to pat us on the backs for good deeds and any sort of hardship-survival.

But heck, nobody gets that fun privelege except for...well...reality TV stars like:

Jon and Kate Who I Hate Plus Eight. Those lucky bastards!

Bipolar Bikini

2009-12-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Guests-n-Regulars!

Warning! This is a bipolar post. Rather, an Attention-Deficit-Disorder-Inducing post with two polar opposite subjects combined into one scroll of text. The first part consists of silly fluff - stuff that would be of utmost importance if we all lived...say...on the set of Sex and the City. The second part will bring us all back down to earth, where we'll shove our feet into the cool, damp mud together. Please, please, please read the whole thing. I really need you to get to Part 2 of this post, because it's actually more important than the first part.

Why am I cramming two polar different topics into one post? Well, I will be away from the entire godforsaken Internet (yipeeee!!!!) for a full week starting tomorrow, which means I've got to cram all of this week's thoughts into one chunk of language. Where am I disappearing to for a week? Why, thanks for asking! I was hoping you would. How to say this in a way that sufficiently explains why I am buzzing with fluttery excitement today?

In a nutshell, Kevin and I are going from here:

to here.

Need I say more? It's an island called Vieques off the coast of Puerto Rico. See that white tourist dude hangin' under the palm tree? That will soon be Kevin. And next to Kevin will be me, leisure pawing little pits in the sand and watching warm Carribean water swirl into those pits, reveling in the feeling of doing nothing at all.

And now, Part 1: The Fluff

Okay, let's all pretend we're girly characters on Sex and the City, like I said, and that the most important issue of our lives besides getting laid is...you guessed it...FASHION. Okay, are we there? Good.

It was Kevin who first suggested that I purchase a bikini for our trip to Puerto Rico. I don't understand what he has against my stretched out, dark brown one piece swimsuit from the JC Penney sale rack - but his reaction to it has always been luke-warm at best. Perhaps it's that the material is now stretched to the point of hanging baggily on my boobs. At any rate, he saw me unwadding it from my gym bag, he politely mentioned that I should splurge on something new. Something a bit more...um...revealing, maybe a bit more comfortable.

Now, let me start by saying I have never owned a bikini in my life. No, no, no. I'm a one-piece-swimsuit-with-constant-towel-covering-up-my-thighs kind of gal. Why put myself or anyone else through the anxiety of a bikini? Totally unnecessary, not to mention impractical. Still, I had this sudden sense that if I am ever going to get away with wearing a bikini, then now would be the time - what with my bulging belly stretching out the existing stomach flab, making the stomach flab look mercifully like a mere extension of my prego belly. I would fool the world into thinking that my WHOLE BELLY is comprised of innocent and womanly pregnant-ness, not sculpted from beer and nachos!

So I went to the mall - the same mall where I ventured to make my bold, recent first-time purchase of lingerie - and reluctantly bought TWO suits to try on at home. Gawd, is there anything worse than pulling a swimsuit over one's pasty, flabby body under the fluorescent lights of a Target dressing room, especially knowing you look nothing like the beanpole-thin 14-year-olds trying on skinny jeans around you? That, plus the thought of peeling off my several layers of woolen winter clothing only to have to put them back on five minutes later, was enough to compel me to buy both suits, try them on at home, and return the one I hated least.

I tried on my new purchases today to parade them self-consciously in front of Kevin and seek his opinion. He has a favorite, but I'll withhold that information. Perhaps you can take an unbiased look, and let me know which you hate least? It's imperative that I know tonight, because we leave early tomorrow morning, and one of these suits shall stay here! And if you hate them both, then GOOD. I'll tell Kevin I should just wear my brown one-piece as originally planned.

The first, obviously safer option is techically a two-piece, but a more conservative variety.

I sort of like the fact that it's not a total string-thing, but that the lower portion has a thicker panel of materal to hide the...I'm not sure...hip fat? And I think the plaid design has a particular...I don't know...1950s wholesome quality to it that I like.

The next one is much more of a traditional, scary bikini type of bikini - the kind that horny 8th-grade boys would try to yank the strings of and make your top come off at the water park. This one makes me nervous.

OK, I admit wholeheartedly: there are bigger problems I should be brooding about, much more important things going on in the world that matter more than this particular issue. Still, a two-piece suit is...well...it's a BIG DEAL in my book! It's like getting your first training bra, or kissing your first boy! OK, not THAT big a deal, but big nonetheless.

PS - no comments from perverted, dirty old men please. These are pregnant-lady pictures, not photo-ops from Playboy magazine, for fuck's sake!

* * *

Part 2: The Deep Stuff

Totally, utterly, irritatingly unrelated to the bikini bit, but here goes. Even as I prepare to write this, I'm getting choked up. It is soooo not about bikinis. I want to put this out here, because...well...I just think it's important. I think it's important to temper the bikini fluff - the prego belly popping out all frivolously - with the hard, earthy reality of life as a TTC/KuKd'er - and to do what I think blogs are really supposed to do: throw back into readers' faces what we already know deep down (with a new twist every now and then).

Ever since I announced my knocked-up-ness on this blog, I've gotten e-mails from readers expressing various states of...um...emotional disarray over my pregnant state. I mean sure, public blog-etiquette dictates that the announcement of something fortunate - like a pregnancy - requires comments like, "I'm so happy for you!" and "Gee, that's great!" I like hearing those, of course - but all along I've known that there's a whole lot more going on than what those surface comments reveal. I'm talking about thoughts that aren't being said, because of this fragile social realm that we live in: fragile feelings, fragile people, fragile situations. I know, because I've been there.

The message I got most recently really shook me to tears, in part because I've been a certifiable see-saw of emotion lately, but also in part because of the sheer brilliance and honesty of it. What's extraordinary about this particular reader, however, is her courage to be really straightforward with how she's feeling. The best way to convey her meaning, I think, is to give you a brief abridged clip from her message. Here, give it a read.

And no skimming; give it the nice, thoughtful read it deserves - because it's brimming with little gems of truth.

Hey Monica; I feel kind of ridiculous writing to you with 'hey, monica', like we actually know each other, and this next line might freak you out but don't worry, I am going to pay you the ultimate compliment.

I sat and cried and cried this morning, blowing stupid snot bubbles into my husband's freshly washed and newly put on tee-shirt as he was trying to get ready for work. I blubbered on about your words, your experience, and how I felt so stunningly left behind. Usually your words provide a quite reprieve, your bitterness is somehow comforting, your honesty a place to be comfortably uncomfortable. I felt like... you understood. You understood more than me, you were beyond my own experiences, my own pain, my own sense of loss.

We've gone through a 9 week miscarriage and two early miscarriages and I know that's nothing compared to your journey. But we can't make it happen again. And it hurts. I have counted many women who have endured dead babies (of some stage or another) and gone on to have non-dead babies. In fact, I am the only one I know who is still amazingly, stunningly barren. Unexplained infertility. Except for those three wanted-to-be babies who never existed.

And now that you're pregnant, and for some stupid reason, I feel so fucking alone. And I don't even know you, yet I clung onto your fear, your pain, your loss and somehow my own was less intense because of it. I lost my misery mentor. I can't relate to what you write now... to being happy about pregnant friends and the spark of hope you have burrowing into your belly, kicking and squirming and living and growing. I depended on your stinging honesty, your fuck-you attitude and your pain and the raw expression of it to deal with not only the loss of our baby, but the loss of not having another.

It's kind of like being on a close-knit team of underdogs, always gamely fighting against the odds and never really making it... but cheering each other on, wrapping wounds and screaming encouragement when someone really bites it...... then one cool evening, you show up for the game under the bright lights... and slowly realize as you look around and you're the only one left and there is no team. Just you, on the field, alone, and everyone you knew has moved on to the majors. Somehow, in my warped little online world... you were not only the team captain, but the only other member left.

Monica, how selfish of me.... I was comforted knowing someone had been hurt more than me. Human I guess, but I hate to admit to that downfall of my personality. There are few people who I believe deserve the joy you are feeling, and you are pretty much in the top three on that list. Please just be flattered. I don't mean to be hurtful. You are an amazingly strong woman and your words are important, and they are real. A good author takes something right in front you and makes you see it in a whole new light. I wish you the absolute best and a wonderful, easy birth and freakishly healthy baby who goes to Harvard, marries the most beautiful woman in the world and gives you six grand babies (with not even the whisper of a miscarriage) who surround you every holiday with shouts of 'grandma!'.... I do wish that for you.

I'm going to send this because I think you might find it refreshingly insulting(?), raw(?) or just plain weird(?) and you seem to be a person who appreciates all that.

OK, breathe. Isn't this message just so...I don't know...brutally, awesomely truthful? Doesn't it make you want to light candles and blast Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve?

I do in fact find her message "refreshingly insulting AND raw" - not at all weird. She reminds me, and reminds us all, what I think is the hardest and most hurtful aspect of KuKd/TTC: the fact that the people we bond with oftentimes move on, leaving others behind. We move on to different places in our lives, mentally and emotionally, and we move on in more tangible ways - like having non-dead babies. You make friends in the IF/KuKd community and sometimes, yeah - you look around and realize that the people who were with you, right in step beside you, suddenly have leapt forward through time and space into a different place. I would liken it to losing a best friend in high school: you suddenly aren't having the deep talks you had in the past, sharing the same fuck-you attitudes about everything that you used to.

I've been there so many times in this KuKd journey, and in fact I'm still there in certain ways. There is nothing in this reader's message that didn't make me nod and go, yup. I get it. And nothing that didn't make me feel profoundly sad that this is how the world has to work.

I felt it important to put this message out here, now, in light of my "problem" of choosing the right bathing suit. It's a problem that many people, I realize, wish they had: how to look good on the beach insi de of a pregnant body. The fact is, by virtue of being pregnant, I've alienated some readers - and I've always known and felt deeply troubled by this inevitible fact. I've been on both sides of this weird line several times in my life: on the left-behind side, and the moving-ahead side.

I guess what I want to say, what I want to remind people of, is this: that neither side of that "line" is a happy and wonderful place, that the loneliness oozing forth in the message above goes both ways. Pregnancy - yes - will automatically set a woman apart from the very people she's counted on to connect with and share that fuck-you attitude. It's happened with me. It was hard for me to even keep this pregnancy, let alone announce it publicly. I knew - again, having been there lots of times before - that it would turn me into someone else, someone with a growing belly and a different outlook from that of many of my readers. I knew it would help me deal with others' babies. I knew it would propel me to some forward place - but that this moving forward would be a bittersweet journey, because it would effectively take me away from the very core thing that's helped me survive my own journey: the vastly supportive commuity I've found through the blog-o-sphere.

But I also think that - even despite the hurt caused by this difference - women in this IF/KuKd community share a special bond that really can't be broken even by pregnancy. The amazingly strong person who wrote this message: nope, she surely can't relate to pregnant bikini-shopping, or the mental embracing of my friend's new baby, or the optimism that comes with a burgeoning fetus in the belly. But I so want to believe that even the sudden, sharp difference created by pregnancy can't take away the supportive bonds formed in the IF/Kukd community. If that were the case, we'd all be royally screwed.

This pregnancy isn't easy for me, even as I slice up sugar-cookie dough and prance around in a bikini like nothing at all is awry. Of course, I'm optimistic; I can't pretend not to be. But it's a weird, lonely journey in its own way, and I've really not found other prego-friends who I can truly talk shit with about my everyday concerns. I keep up this blog because, frankly, the readers who have been through KuKd loss before are the real people I feel most connected to even still - not the clucking group of new mommies or prego-gals at Motherhood Maternity. What the fuck do THEY know about how hard, how important, how precarious this whole business really is?

The truth is, I'm really not a Misery Ring Leader (although I think that would be a cool thing to have on my resume) - I'm just as much of a needy and clueless follower as the rest of the class. So I don't want anyone to think the Misery Ring Leader has deserted the squad. I'm not in the clear, no way Jose. There are three months left to go on this pregnancy, and if/when this baby comes into the world, I'll STILL not be in the clear. So you can count on me for ongoing cynicism, if nothing else. I say my thoughts here, and hope a few people understand. And usually, at least one person gets it. And then I get to feel like a normal human being.

So thanks, to that lovely person, for sharing those thoughts, for saying things that I was thinking and feeling just six short months ago, for tuning me into how this blog has helped and affected you, and for reminding me to walk the line as skillfully as I can. That is: being the Prego Me and the Knocked-Down me, and figuring out how to do both without having an identity crisis.

Maybe I should just stick to the one-piece stretched brown swimsuit. I'm starting to think the bikini itself might be cause for an identity crisis...

;-)

See yous in a week!

To Be Human

2009-12-13T04:03:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC'ers and Inquisitive Guests...

Pardon if this middle-of-the-night post sounds choppy. It was a long day of partying, followed by the hearburn and hyperactive sensation that comes with over-partying. So rather than thrashing around in bed and sighing loudly every five minutes in a covert effort to arouse my snoozing husband (what the hell is the fun in being wide awake at 2am alone??), I did the civilized thing: quietly got out of bed, padded into the kitchen in my moose slippers, gnawed on a cold pepperoni stick, and resigned myself to not sleeping. Which means I'm up, alone, listening to the thunks and creaks of our old house, and hoping to god it isn't the sound of a serial killer climbing through the basement window.

In my last post, I made reference to this super-hoardworthy friend of mine who -after years of infertility struggles and some KuKd brouhaha of her own - just delivered a healthy baby boy. By "hoardworthy," I'm talking - of course - about that tiny handful of peeps that stick by you and hold your hand for months and years to come, even when the others have all drifted away. Here is the friend who - even as she herself was struggling to get pregnant at all - shoved her own problems aside and became sort of like this grief sounding-board for me, a constant listener and supporter (and still is). She sent me, on Mother's Day the year after Zach's death, a silver handmade necklace engraved with his name. Not many people would have the balls to do that, and she did. She also pushed me harder than anyone else to write my book.

Through insomnia-induced brain fog, I remember how it used to feel when friends had babies: this weird robotic numbness combined with the sense of hugging a porcupine or a cloud of nails. I won't go on and on about this to you, who - because you are reading this - probably already know so well this barfy feeling I'm referring to. One could say it like this: KuKd robs a woman of her ability to feel that normal, happy, congratulatory feeling that traditionally comes with a newborn infant. Actually, let me retract that blanket-statement and speak only for myself: I oftentimes felt like I'd been shaped into this subhuman, hypersenstive monster by being propped up with a baby on the way, and then allowed to fall on my face multiple times. Babies - pending babies, just-born babies - reminded me of that invisible shell of a baby that wasn't in my life.

But my point here really isn't about that age-old topic. Rather, it's about reaching...what...a turning point, maybe? Feeling like a human being, finally? Looking back to where I was, and realizing with certainty where I am now in contrast, and sighing in relief that I've reached this point?

When my friend's newborn baby boy was on his way into the world this past week, I found myself feeling distinctly different from how I have in the past: not running away, but running toward. It was this oddly emotional experience to hear about this little boy's overdue-ness, the dramatic race to the hospital after a looonnnggg time in labor for a homebirth, and finally his safe delivery. Rather than feeling that detached, porcupine-hugging feeling (oh noooo! another friend is having a baby!), I felt this rush of investment, hugely afraid that something might go awry, and hugely, happily, ecstatically relieved when everything ended okay. It was one of the happiest, most emotional moments in recent memory - and it's not even my damned baby!

Again, my point: this seems new to me, strangely human, refreshingly normal and un-KuKd-monster-like. Just feeling normal feelings - the worries, the nail-biting suspence, the relief. Isn't that more akin to what one is supposed to feel when a baby arrives? I hope so. Perhaps it's being pregnant myself that helps me shed my baby-related "issues" of the past few years. Or, perhaps it's that combined with the simple passage of time: two years and four months since Zachary left us, almost to this day. That's a lot more than a day or a month or a year.

So I'm just pleased as punch that my dear, loving, ever-selfless and supportive friend now has her moment in the sun, especially knowing all that she's given me. And I'm pleased as punch that I'm pleased as punch, because a year ago, I might not have felt this pleased. I might felt pleased, but with odd swirls of weird and helpless sorrow mixed in there, sorrow for myself, and wondering fearfully if and when I would ever return to normal. Not that I'm there - not that I'm normal (in fact, never have been and probably never will be) - but my friend's son's birth reminds me what I often forgot:

I'm human.

* * *

OHHHHH, I think that's the sound of Kevin getting up to take a middle-of-the-night piss! Now is my chance to run in there, tap him on the shoulder, and ask him to come out here and watch denture-infomercials and Home Shopping Network with me! Or we could just talk. Or go out for midnight breakfast. Whatever. I'm up for anything. At this utterly awful time to be awake, my social schedule is wide open.

To my hoardworthy friend, I love you and that little, perfect boy of yours. And your husband's pretty hot, too, in sort of a vaguely ethnic kind of way.

A Baby

2009-12-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

Hello from Heartburn Hell (dang V8 juice),

The concept of "all babies are miracles" has always struck me as slightly odd. When I think of a miracle, I think of some rare occurence like winning the lottery. Excuse me, but isn't the earth's population...what...six billion? Seven billion? Something like that. At any rate, that's a lot of babies - far too many to classify each one as a "miracle" in my book. It seems like all most people have to do is get their genitals together to exchange high-fives, and BOOM - an infant materializes.

Of course, all of that goes out the window once you enter the TTC/IF/KuKd universe, where a baby suddenly is - really now - a miracle. A good east-coast friend had a baby within the last 48 hours. She's worked so hard for this baby, which gives his birth a special miraculous quality. More deets later on that friend, once she's stepped out of her baby-delivery daze and brought the little guy home from the hospital. There's a lot to say about her.

In the meantime, that fuzzy mobile-phone picture of her little guy made me wonder suddenly what I simply haven't the brain-capability to wonder very often: will our baby come too?

Will we have our moment in the hospital, just over three months from now? Will I push and scream out strings of profanity as Kevin holds my hand with that wide-eyed stricken look of a jacked-up wild animal? And moments later will there be the shrill cry of a newborn, as is supposed to happen? Will I be taking pictures of that squinty-eyed baby to send to the world? Will I walk into my office building and get bear-hugs from everyone? Will our phone be ringing as casseroles pile up at our doorstep? Will somebody throw me a baby shower? Will there be sunlight slanting through the windows at my baby shower, and chicken-salad-croissant sandwiches arranged beautifully on glass plates, served with chilled champagne? Will I sit perched and glowing on our green Ikea chair, opening presents and holding up little onesies? Will Kevin and I do a celebratory shot of whiskey, ensuring our little Irish guy gets a high-end first dose of breastmilk?

Of course, I have to believe that yes, it's all on its way like a freight train in the distance rumbling toward me with unwavering certainty. How can I not believe? When so much of what I injest, think, feel, shit, say, and do relates in some way to this kickboxing, penis-toting gymnast now inhabiting my body cavity, how can I not freefall into expectant hope? I'm not reading any baby books or doing any childbirth classes, no reading up on parenting strategies or nearby preschools, no talking incessantly about baby-this and baby-that, no postulating on where the baby will sleep or how we'll work out the logistics of whatever. Nope. I trust those thoughts and conversations to come when they have to. Right now, the hope and belief are deeper and quieter than all those surface elements of pregnancy-craze. It's more like a subtle little dialogue inside my head between me and him. The fetus, that is.

You're coming, aren't you?

If he comes, when he comes, he'll fit - I'm pretty damn sure - my narrow definition of a miracle, as does my friend's newborn boy. He'll be a miracle to me because he won't have come easily, or without an earlier price. And if on the off-chance he doesn't come, well, that's beyond what I can remotely imagine. So let's not even go there.

Let's take a Tums and go to bed instead. :-)

Normalcy, Interrupted

2009-12-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC'ers and Inquisitive Guests!

Forget those last few posts about advice-giving. Advice-giving my ass! Who am I to give it? I'm certainly not homefree in all this or above anyone else on the KuKd healing front, let me tell you. I was reminded just yesterday about its presence in there: that murky and tangled ball of messy emotion, buried farther each year. It rose up suddenly to the surface to interrupt otherwise normal holiday cheer. Perhaps it was Zachary hitting me with a reminder from the Stillborn Babe Penthouse up above: HEY MOM! Hellooooooo, rosy-cheeked lady wtih the fake-wine sloshing in a glass! Remember me? That other baby boy from a two-and-a-half years ago? The ORIGINAL numero uno that came waaay before that other little growing half-baby in your belly, the one you now think about dreamily all the time. I was here first, and don't you forget it!

* * *

The week began normally.

First, a brand new camera. As a pre-Christmas gift to myself, I went in for the $99 Fuji on sale, but they sold me on the $279 dealio with promises of better close-up shots, a cash rebate, AND a gift card for a fancy seafood restaurant where Kevin and I could go on a date some day! A real date! Which I'm certain we'll do as soon as I stop lying on my side and groaning like a beached pregnant whale. How could I resist? So I came home, sheepishly telling Kevin I spent "a tad bit more" than the original intended amount. He knew better than to ask "how much more." Some things are best left to the imagination.

Next, the holiday baking spree. Still just normal behavior, no bleak KuKd relics rising up like bile in the mouth. My good friend M, makes the baddest-ass sugar cookies on the planet when he isn't reviewing Seattle-area restaurants: chewy, sweet but not too sweet, and ever-so-slightly salty. His talk about sugar cookies reminded me that as long as I can remember, my mom and I have made that very thing each Christmas. Good'ol sugar cookies, rolled and cut into shapes and then frosted. I usually make them on my own now, with the occasional venturing into something else. This year, I started with that "something else," which - despite being openly frowned upon by sugar-cookie guru and traditionalist M himself, were these chewy molassas spice cookies.

(And of course, I took the opportunity to try some close-up shots with my new Fuji camera . I'm not getting paid to drop product names into my blog - although a million bucks per mentioning would certainly be welcome, Fuji executives!)

First, the butter, sugar, and molasses:

Then came everything else, mixed-n-formed into little dough blobs and rolled in sugar, as Tebow watched with great interest:

...and into the oven they went. Pure holiday pleasure! Meanwhile, it was time to make sugar-cookie dough. I realized, though, I'm sick of rolling and cutting sugar cookies into cheezy dork-wad shapes like Santas and gingermen and stars. So I decided to venture out and shape my cookie dough into a rectangular log-shape.

Sliced it into squares:

...And baked'em. Eight minutes at 375 degrees, taking them out still slightly undercooked as M recommends, allowing them to finish baking outside the oven and remain moist on the inside. As you can see, Tebow approved wholeheartedly.

My fresh-baked cookie squares got stacked next to their chewy molasses counterparts to be photographed by my eager, now butter-fingerprint-covered Fuji camera.

And then, frosted-n-decorated (and re-photographed, of course):

So I rode this wave of holiday-high for most of the week, reveling in the joys of my new camera and baking adventures.

* * *

Here's where Zachary's spirit dropped down on this bungi-cord thingy from up above, and reminded me - I guess - that despite the frilly joys of consumerism and photography and mixing sweet goodness in glass bowls, one can never take away one's KuKd status. Which is to say that he - that boy who never became a boy - will always be there in some form or another.

It hit me when a couple of old baby-lady buddies came over to visit - N and C, the originals. By "originals" I'm talking, of course, about those two kindred-spirit friends who were prego alongside me back in the day, their babies due at the same time as Zachary. We stood around in the living room and chatted amicably, eating cookies (of course), co-marveling at my now eye-popping belly size, all of us laughing at raunchy things with our heads tossed back as usual.

This time, however, the conversation veered into what used to be forbidden territory, as dictated by an unspoken rule: baby talk. I mean, breastfeeding and backaches and sleeping patterns and daycare and all those baby-talk things that mommies and almost-mommies talk about. It was cool for the most part; I got into it. If you look closely at this blurred shot, you might even see the glories of my double laughing-chin:

But there was one moment when it wasn't cool, just a fleeting moment.

It was like this sudden, acute sense of two universes intersecting. The old one, where we used to talk about this stuff all the time - except as mutually eager and inexperienced innocents. Not talking about what it was like to have your nipples chaffed by a gnawing infant, but what it was going to be like - because none of us had ever done this before. Now, enter new universe: in this one, N and C have been on a two-year odessy of new parenthood together, so our positions are different. It's me as eager and clueless learner/listener, and them as seasoned knowers and tellers.

How can I not recognize this shift? And once I think about that, how can I not begin to consciously remember what caused this shift, the big dark event that I always think is safely ensconced in some hidden place in my heart where it won't resurface at inopportune times? How can I have this conversation with N and C and not fleetingly re-feel old feelings, yet again coming to terms with what's been the hardest, harshest form of social exclusion I've ever dealt with: my friends continued down that motherhood path without me?

I can't. As a living, thinking human being, I can't stay robotically and emotionally neutral as our society seems most comfortable with. It wasn't a break-into-tears-and-run-into-the-bathroom-while-everyone-shuffles-awkwardly-out-of-the-house kind of moment, but rather a private and subltle little swirl of emotion that swept over me like a cold chill, even as I nodded and laughed at N's penis-joke. Zachary, tapping me on the shoulder from his bungi-cord, reminding me. The feeling vanished quickly as I got distracted by more cookies and picture-taking opportunities, then came back later after everyone had left. And by morning time as I munched on my muesli cereal, it was gone. Pretty soon I was all holiday-smiles again, playfully bumping bellies with my friend G:

And the fine-ness has managed to stick around.

Isn't it weird, how unpredictable and actually long-term grief really is, how it's here one minute and gone the next? Making cookies, feeling in a funk all of a sudden, then POOF - funk is just gone into thin air. I think I'll ride this thin-air wave while I can, go eat some frosted cookie-squares and watch a few episodes of 30 Rock. :-)

KuKd Assvice: Perils and Responsibilities

2009-12-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

Greetings KuKd'ers, TTC'ers and Inquisitive Guests!

Thank you, first, for indulging me in that last post. I'm talking about the one with the totally unscientific holiday assvice for the Newly Knocked Down. It was a weird and new endeavor for me, even a bit scary, trying to write that post. So I thank you wholeheartededly for playing along.

That post was kind of an experiment, really. Here's what writers and politicians and anyone else with a public persona seem to do: they use words, pictures, fashion, music, and other things to create an identify for themselves. It's like: if you walk the gangsta walk, you become a gangsta. If you talk the politican talk, you become a politican. Likewise, I thought if I said the precise right thing in the precise right way, I could become - literally - someone who knew what she was talking about. Imagine that! All I had to do was act the part, and BOOM - I'd be one of those wise, crusty old KuKd veterans with something marvelously insightful to say to my "younger" flock of fledgling dead-baby'ers.

I should say up front that when I wrote that post, it wasn't my intent to fool anyone. Those were honest things that I was thinking and feeling. They were things I wished I could go back in time and say to myself, frazzled and shellshocked person that I was 2.5 years ago. Things I would say to our future daughter-in-law, if we have a daughter-in-law, if she - by chance - got knocked down. They came to me from wherever it is in our hearts where newfound knowledge begins to form, and crytstalizes into something we're certain of.

But it got me wondering, with KuKd, is there...I mean....is there really and truly any advice, assvice, whatEVer, that is appropriate to give to the Newly Knocked Down or the chronically Trying-To-Conceive, both of which I percieve to be particularly vulnerable groups? And are there, in fact, some people who legitimately have more advice to give than others, simply by virture of their experience? And what makes me think I am, or could be, one of those people - any more than any other person of average intelligence out there?

During the lowest points of my KuKd days, there wasn't much that anyone could say to make me feel better, except for when my mom said: "you'll get through this." I believed her, and needed to hear that. But moreover, I remember going to a support group and leaving in a state of irritation, because the facilitator kept cutting everybody off to slather us with assvice. She had lost her baby son about twenty years earlier, so I suppose she had a right to tell us how everything would/should be, and what we should all be doing. But man, did that lady piss me off. I vowed right then to never be that person if I encountered a Newly Knocked Downer - the talking head that interrupts just hear my own obnoxious voice, pelting everyone compulsively with un-asked-for advice.

So in that last post, going back and reading it, I began to wonder: did I just break that vow? Crap. If I did, I'll be resting my embarassed head on Kevin's chest in front of our now-working fireplace tonight for comfort (actually no - the gigantic tumor-like appendage coming off my torso keeps me from lying in any kind of intimately girly pose with my husband, the poor guy).

It makes me wonder about my role in the public sphere, and how I might shape this blog into something more beneficial for the Newly Knocked-Down than merely, "check out this olive-oil bath I just took!" I wonder if I can give something back to the world that's truly useful, or if that would only come off as arrogant and irritating and saturated with unwanted assvice. Blegh.

* * *

There's also this, perhaps more pressing immediate issue.

This past week, I've been trying to write the final two pages of my book manuscript, and I keep hitting a brick wall of writers' block. This waiting-to-be-written section is essentially supposed to be a teensy-weensy, tongue-and-cheek advice section for pregnancy/infant loss. It's called, for now: "Appendix: Field Notes for the Newly Knocked Down."

Now, it's the worst feeling to sit in front of a blank Microsoft Word document, cursor blinking at me expectantly, and be literally unable think of a single solitary thing to say. Even after I go clip my toenails, pet my dog, eat a pickle, do some jumping-jacks, and pee a few inches of pee into the toilet, the words STILL don't come to me.

Which is why I wrote that last blog post. I felt the words were there in me, the advice-like things I wanted to say to the world - just a few of them. I just wanted to try out this particular persona and see if I could say such things in a serious way, without annoying myself to pieces. Could I write something that I myself would have looked at through fresh, tear-soaked eyes a few years ago and felt just a teensy bit better, not worse? Just writing it was a good exercise, because the very next day, the words started coming to me like a flood - and BANG - I began typing out that last section of my book manuscript like a keyboardist on speed. Ahhh, relief.

Maybe, just maybe (warning: I'm really pulling this part out of my ass, so bear with me), we all have a responsibility on our blogs, websites, books, cocktail party conversations, to give back to those "fledgling KuKd newbies" by telling them what we know in our hearts, in as non-intrusive and non-annoying way possible. I mean, those things that we ourselves wished we had known back in our lowest of low days. If there's a silver lining in all this, perhaps it's just that: when we go through traumatic shit, we learn. When we contribute what we learn to the general pool of knowledge, we help others. Some people, like Cara and Stirrup Queen - are at a point in their lives where they're ready to help others who are still just trying to survive the worst. Maybe my time for that is now.

Or, maybe there's no place for real advice in the land of KuKd and IF: perhaps it's all about how we find our own way, following our instincts and muddling through.

Oh, it all sounds so hippy-happy, doesn't it? Then again, 'tis the season to look for silver linings...or in the case below, aliens flying inside of silver linings (seriously, doesn't that one cloud look weird??)

To the Newly Knocked Down

2009-11-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

Ask a Dead-Baby-Momma: SPECIAL HOLIDAY COLUMN!

To my friends overseas: you may or may not know that today is Thanksgiving Day over here in les Etats Unis. Ahhh, Thanksgiving: day to gather around a large dead bird on a plate, carve off its flesh, and cram forkfuls of it into our mouths! A day of reconvening lovingly with family and friends, interspersed with hiding in a dark corner room and writing blog posts instead (although what kind of anti-social loser would do that?)! A day, in theory, to be consciously grateful for what we have (like each other) and don't have (like bubonic plague).

Yet for some, it's hard day too. There's something about these supposedly joyful and festive days that can be oddly depressing, particularly if the things you do have only serve as reminders of what you don't have. It sort of reminds me of that statistic that suicide rates in freezing-arse cold countries tend to skyrocket during the warm summer months. I wonder if it's because you think to yourself: The sun is shining and I'm supposed to be happy right now, dammit! But I'm not. So I suck. Has anyone seen my gun lately?

Family holidays: likewise.

This Thanksgiving (yes, even I should be helping my mother-in-law stir the pot of creamed onions right now, but as your Dead Baby Momma advice giver, I felt it my duty to sneak away for a moment), I sense this strange, cosmic presence of the Newly Knocked-Down Mommas out there, hovering nearby. Perhaps it's because lately, I've gotten an inordinate number e-mails and hellos from people with losses as recent as this year, or this month, or even this week. I don't know if KuKd is a seasonal disorder or what, but it sure feels that way as of late.

At any rate, I felt compelled to reach out to those mommas whose Thanksgiving days - or whose other holidays coming up - aren't as joyful as they could have been, or would have been, or should have been. If only that much-anticipated thing had happened, that particular human being were here and alive on earth as originally intended. Holidays would feel different this year, closer to how they look the Hallmark commercials.

Here we go.

* * *

Dear Newly Knocked Down Mommas and Daddas:

Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news?

Let's start with the bad: holidays like this one are going to just plain suck for a while. Somebody will be missing from the table - and that's a fact you can't avoid noticing, no matter how lovely the food and conversation otherwise is. You'll sense that missing person more acutely than others will, and that's not fun. It's sort of like Big Bird imagining his friend Snuffaluffagus - a friend that nobody else can see - except that in your case, you're imagining...a ghost, a lack, an absence.

Furthermore, it's unlikely that anyone will want to explicily mention the baby that isn't there, even if you happen to desperately want to talk about him or her. You may find yourself feeling hurt or frustrated by this fact.

Keep in mind that other people's trauma is beyond the conversational comfort zone of most people, especially on a supposedly joyful holiday occasion. Think about it: you've probably been on the flip side before, sidled up next to a person whose mother or father or grandparent or pet cat just died. How comfortable would you feel saying, "Can you pass the salt, please? Oh, and I'm sorry your grandmother died such a horrible and drawn-out death filled pain. The biscuits are delicious, by the way!" That said, most people - with occasional exceptions - are fully aware of that missing person at the table and saddened in their own way, because your loss is theirs too. Baby-death is a blow to the entire community. There just aren't any clear-cut rules for how to talk about it.

And now, the good news:

1) Escape'em or face'em: this year especially, you have a carte blanch to do whatever in fuck's name you feel like doing when it comes to the holidays. Never mind the traditions, never mind what others think is best for you, never mind what your family wants. They'll deal with whatever you decide to do. You're in survival mode right now, as you should be - so confer with your partner if you have one, and come up with a plan to do the least hurtful, most awesome thing this holiday season. You just got screwed beyond belief, so pamper yourself! You can do what this Dead-Baby-Momma did just four months after KuKdx2: cancel all the family holiday plans and take off to Ecuador with a hunk-o-husband and an overstuffed backpack. Or, if family is what you need, do it. Follow your gut instinct.

2) Things get better. They really do. Have faith in yourself to uncover coping mechanisms you never knew you had, to find your own ways to balance grieving with healing. News flash: they happen at the same time, without you even knowing it! So even as you sit at the holiday dinner table feeling like a big ball of shit, that shit-feeling is part of your healing journey. Aside from your own powerful psyche and soul, the simple passage of time is another one of nature's greatest healers. If you happen to be a Newly Knocked-Downer, you haven't much time under your belt to soothe the rawness and help scar tissue form. But as time goes by, your loss will get folded deeper inside of you, and next year's holidays will be easier than this year's. Just by being here on this blog, reading these words, you are in the presence of lots and lots of ladies - and gentlemen - who get it, and who can attest to the truth if these statements. Things will get better.

* * *

My confession: this Thanksgiving, for me, is filled with hope and...well...thankfulness. Let me admit that outright. I write this post from the hopefully-not-perceived-as-smug position of someone who's had time - two years and three months, to be exact - to get to a better, more psychologically sound place than were I was during the holiday season of 2007. I have my brooding, melancholy moments, of course; but at the same time, I'm thankful for so much. I could list the things I'm thankful for here, but they're just the usual cliche things that everybody else is thankful for. Stillbirth has changed all of us - me, Kevin, our families. Now there's a new ball of baby-hope growing in my torso, casting a sheen of glowing anticipation on everything us all. But even before that ball of baby-hope formed, I was already in an infinitely better place than I was a year ago, two years ago - simply due to the passage of time, and the human mental power to heal.

You can take that as a stomach-punch, which is precisely what I did for a year or so after Zach's death: screw you for being farther along that healing track than I am, for being in that more peaceful place that I can hardly even see through the fog of my own hellish misery!

Or you can take it as reassurance that, like I said, things get better.

* * *

In short, enjoy your holidays this year, or hate them. Both emotions are useful in their own way, and necessary parts of the grieving and living process. Your challenge is to be forgiving of others around you, forgiving of cruel facts you can't control, and faithful in yourself to do what's right for you. And if you can't make up your mind, ask that man of yours (or woman of yours) to take the lead and book you both tickets to a kick-arse spa retreat. Pack lots of Kleenex and baby memorabilia for your sad moments, sexy undies for your sex moments, a notebook for your thoughtful moments, and a cell phone for those moments when you're craving Mom or Dad's voice.

Hey all you KuKd veterans - c'mon, am I right or am I right? And any other Thanksgiving words of wisdom you can offer to our more recent forced-inductees into the warped world of baby death?

In Search of WOW!

2009-11-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Folks!

First, the basic 411 for anyone who happens to be inquiring: the testicle-equipped fetus is alive and thriving, with a four-chamber heart that is pumping actively. Aliveness: that's all that I, my cautiously eager parents, and my even more cautiously eager husband can hope for. On the ultrasound screen today, which I peered at alongside my uber-smart-specialist-doctor-lady who essentially knows everything about everything, I saw his little fetal fists moving up and down as though he were doing the Mashed Potato or a frenzied ethnic dance. The doctor laughed, and I laughed too - hard enough to expel what my friend N calls a "pee pellet." Don't ask.

* * *

Moving on.

I walked home from my ultrasound appointment today in one of my belly-poppin' shirts. A young, fresh-faced guy waited beside me at the corner, and turned to ask how far along I was. Nearly six months, I told him in the normal, non-excited, matter-of-fact (even a little bit flippant about the whole thing?) voice that usually surfaces when I talk about such things. His eyes lit up and he extended his hand.

"I'm Taylor! My wife's six-months pregnant too! See her over there in the car across the street? Look, she's waving! Ours is a boy. What's yours?"

I glanced up and waved back, and then shook his hand. Ours was a boy too, I told him. This was their first pregnancy; I could tell by the sheen in his eyes and the number of white teeth showing in his youthful grin.

"WOW!" he said. "Both of us with boys!"

I know. Theoretically, yeah: it was a WOW! moment. We stood there a few seconds longer, shuffling our feet and talking small-talk, and it came up that they had just moved to Seattle. There was a distinct moment where I sensed him about to state the obvious: we should all hang out sometime. But I said something silly like "well, bye!" and turned to dash across the street before either of us could say it.

* * *

You know what I want? What I had for a fleeting moment on that street corner, my hand enclosed in that guy's warm palm with our breath showing in the chilly air, my eyes locking for a split second with his wife's in the car across the street?

I want that WOW!-feeling.

I've had it before, of course. You might have had it too: that first-time pregnancy high that overcomes you the minute that pink plus-sign shows up, like you've just inhaled happy-drugs off a smoking joint of joy. Give that pregnancy-high to someone like me, one of the most uber-social and extroverted people I know, and here's what I would normally do: ask this guy for his phone number, dammit, because dude - we should totally hang out, the four of us! Soon to be six of us! His wife and I could be friends! WOW! We should start scoping out baby-friendly bars together! Let's build a heady friendship, one in which we all deliver around the same date in March and send each other flowers. WOW!

But what prevails in the end is my own scrooge-like attitude: I can't relate to you, and you can't relate to me. Period. This makes for a very lonely pregnancy experience. I wonder sometimes if it's like this for all KuKd-prego gals: lonely. Things aren't as simple as they used to be.

I arrived home and found myself searching online for prego groups in Seattle, almost desperate to regain that sense of...what...belonging? That WOW! feeling that I had before, but that's now dried up? The "Urban Expecting Parent Group" that I started while pregnant with Zach is still there nearly three years later, burgeoning with so many hundreds of prego peeps that the site now says: "closed to new members." Fuck that noise! I could go back there, boasting about myself as the ORIGINAL FOUNDER, thank you very much, and they'd have to let me back in!

(wouldn't they?)

And even if they didn't, I could start a NEW group of my very own! BOO-YA!

But then I realized, just being with a bunch of first-time prego gals might not be the "tribe" for me, tribe-lover that I am. It might not actually bring back that first-time communal prego-high that I miss, and want. I'd probably taint their giddy atmosphere with my scrooge-like cynicism. In fact, I might hate it there altogether, being with those gals, pretending to be someone I'm not, hiding Zachary from them because there wouldn't be a place for him in the conversation. In the end, I decided maybe I'm looking up the wrong tree for my tribe.

Suddenly, I remembered the local "Pregnancy After Loss" support group that meets the last Tuesday of every month at Children's Hospital. That would be tomorrow - yipeee! Now if there were ever a tribe for me, it would be that, right there! Just imagine: a whole roomful of prego KuKd-gals who get it, who understand that weird, special variation of muted excitement that comes with pregnancy after a shitstorm of other pregnancies-gone-awry! That would be my WOW! moment - I just knew it!

But after a bit of quick research, I discovered the group no longer exists.
I could practically hear those horns of disappointment in my mind: wah-waaaahhhhh - like a stand-up comedian's joke had just flopped.

Ah well. It's not so bad. As I bumble through this one on my own, at least I know I've got my mother calling every day to check in, my husband keeping firm watch like a military guard, a blog to post on from time to time. And if I get REALLY desperate, I could always post an ad in the "Missed Connections" section of the newspaper, looking for that guy again and his six-month pregnant wife. I wonder if they'd remember me.

Planet 174 to Planet 41

2009-11-19T18:34:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Guests-n-KuKd/TTC'ers!

Ahhhhh, the 174 and the 41. Everyone knows what I'm talking about, right? I'm talking, of course, about the #174 and #41 Seattle city busses. They look the same (like busses). They act the same (like busses). Yet, they may as well be vehicles from two separate planets, given the vast differences in their purposes, the clientel that they serve, and the sorts of daily adventures I have on them going to and from work.

The 41 - the first segment on my trip to work - is the express bus to downtown from the northern edge of the city. You step on that bus and ZOOM - off you go, straight down the interstate with no other stops. Five minutes later, you step into Seattle's thick downtown-scape of noise and skyscrapers and urban excitement. Everyone looks and acts proper on this bus, sitting quietly and reading the newspaper or typing on their laptops until arrival. Nobody talks or passes gas, or tries to sneak on board without paying. People get on and off quickly and seamlessly, whipping out their shiny bus passes furnished by their corporate or government jobs. And at the end of their 9-5 jobs, the calm and lovely 41 whisks them effortlessly back out of that urban grit, into moderately suburban serenity and the exurbs beyond.

And then there's the 174: the second part of my commute. Now the 174 is the salt-of-the-earth sort of bus where the REAL PEOPLE ride, baby! We keep it REAL on the 174! This bus runs up and down Pacific Highway, two and around the airport, past grungy strip malls into pseudo-urban and dilapidated suburban hell. Here, you've got more than just oh-so-environmentally-conscious commuters dipping one safe little toe into downtown life. Here, you've got real people who rely on the bus to get around. Mommas with three kids hauling grocery bags; crazies talking to themselves; immigrants dressed in a million different ethnic garbs; hoards of teenagers - mostly black and Hispanic - talking loudly (and profanely, even!) while blasting their boom boxes.

When you ride this bus, you better not have issues with personal space - because it's pretty much guaranteed: people are going to cuss in your ear, shout into their cell phones, body slam you when they sit down, and fart loudly. And this bus will always, ALWAYS be late - because nobody every has bus passes to quickly flash at the drive. People only have crumpled bills and coins, and usually not enough.

* * *

I've got so many stories from the past few years of cruising around on these two busses that I could write a full book of vignettes. But I'll start with one from last week, because it relates - kinda - to the subject of babies. And I've got another even juicier one, too - one from this very evening - which I'll save for later.

This one has to do with me in my white, puffy Michelin-Man-looking winter coat that my mom lent me. It's stuffed with fake feathers or something, and very, very, puffy-n-fluffy. Now, at nearly 6-months preggers, I'm already fairly rotund. With my mom's white coat on, snapped around my chin with a gigantic fur-ringed hood enveloping my face, I truly look like the Pilsbury Dough Boy crossed with Big Foot. And, I forgot to remind my mom that I + White Colors = Disaster, given my tendency to spill everything on myself.

So, I was wearing my coat on the 174 on my way to work one morning last week, innocently grading essays, when BAM - it happened: blood started pouring from my nose in rivulets. It happens a lot these days: random bloody noses. My whole body is just engorged with blood. It happens in class, it happens at night, it happens while I'm in the grocery store - so I should have known it would happen right then when I had no Kleenex or anything even similar to Kleenex, AND had my mom's gleaming puffy white coat snapped around my chin.

First, of course, I yanked off that coat, examining it briefly for blood stains - of which I saw just a small one near the bottom seam. Then, I tried sucking down my nosebleed for a while - making these deep, gutteral, disgusting snorting sounds in an effort to swallow all that metallic-y, bloody, snotty, spitty goodness. It sort of sounded like I was hawking a loogie, but a backwards one. And, being already closely surrounded by weird, old, bad-smelling men making similar phlegmy coughing sounds (and even spitting directly onto the floor of the bus, I might add), I didn't feel so bad about joining the chorus of 174-sounds.

But sucking down a bloody nose can only get you so far, as all you chronic nosebleed-havers can attest. I really, really, really needed a tissue.

There was a brief break in the blood flow, so I used that time to rummage frantically through my bag for an old napkin or a piece of cloth, an antique American flag, a Maxi-pad, a banana peel, an envelope, a magazine, SOMETHING I could use to catch blood from my nose. But there was nothing but pens, a jump drive, a tube of chapstick, and a bunch of keys on a key chain. Nothing that would do me much good. And with my newly cropped hair cut, I couldn't even use my dark brown tresses of hair as a makeshift hankerchief (ahhh, how I miss the days when I could use my hair as emergency dental floss!).

With a long while still to go on my trip, I had to resort to the one and only thing that could be used to scrape blood off my upper lip: my student essays, of course. I rifled through them and found one with just half a sentence or so on the last page, ripped it out of its staped position, crumpled it up, and there it was. My pointy, sharp, totally uncomfortable excuse for a Kleenex.

But hey, it worked. And I'm pretty sure that student didn't know what he was missing.

Oh, one of the coughing, stringy-haired men sidled up beside me did give me a couple of long stares - I could feel his eyes on me. But I didn't mind. I felt like one of them: part of the proud, gritty 174 crew!

* * *

Coming soon: tonight's completely and utterly different encounter on that OTHER bus, the 41.

Hot Soldier Stillbirth Dad

2009-11-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTCers and Inquistive Guests!

This post is about me being a self-serving little bitch. Sort of.

But first, I was trying to find the perfect representative image of a man whose oft-knocked-down-wife is pregnant once again. Pregnancy! What was once a safe and happy cake-walk is now a landmine-filled endeavor fraught with hidden dangers that even the most intellectully keen, foresightful, specially trained elite army forces can't predict or control!

Man becomes military scout on the constant lookout for danger:

Or maybe this:

(I don't know about you, but I'm going with image number 2. That's him, my Hot Soldier Stillbirth Daddy-O! Notice his manly package, powerfully capable of producing mass quantites of offspring (ahem, non-viable offpsring - but we'll ignore that detail for now). So enormous that even the whatever-you-call-that-thing on a machine gun can hardly hide it!)

To this particular man of mine, even the most seemingly ordinary and obvious information - like "the fetus just kicked" or "the ultrasound showed that he's alive and has the appropriate number of eye sockets" - is reassuring. When I tell him those things, I feel like the colonel relaying good news to the general: "Sir, we've secured stability in that one random little dusty town in northern Iraq!"

These conversations give me some selfish satisfaction, not just because I like seeing my man happy, but because for some reason it always feels good to be extra-nice to a soldier. You want to...like...send him a care package with fresh-baked cookies and glossy porn mags or other happy-making fodder. You're so grateful for his protective and manly abilities, his sacrifices, that you want to protect him in return - in whatever lame-ass way that you can.

Part of that means protecting him from negative information. Does anyone else have memories of your parents or grandparents protecting you from bad news, particularly when it hasn't been verified yet? Like deaths and illnesses in the family - I mean real bad news? My mom does it, K's mom does it. Always have. To me, that's what it means to be a seasoned, mature handler of bad news. You could succumb to your own fear and emotion, immediately calling everyone on the planet to rope others into your pool of anxiety. Or, you could wait until you have all the facts before you jump to conclusions and freak out your loved ones (potentially unnecessarily).

* * *

I like to think of my KuKdx3 status, my ripe old age of 33, as an opportunity to be like my and K's mothers are, and have always been. To be a wise and seasoned handler of potentially scary news. But ya know what?

I'm failing miserably at it.

It came up a few days ago, when there was blood in the toilet, twice. It was one of those things where I looked down at the water and went FUCK, with little alarm bells going off loudly inside my head. K was at the gym playing b-ball and had a fun night planned with his guy-friends after that. So it was kind of like: do I call him or not? Do I chill the hell out until I have some facts straight, or succumb to the almost overpowering urge call him to babble about this possible deadly sign, knowing it will worry him to pieces?

I tried for a while to be the mature, level-headed, Zen-like wife. I tried to wait it out for a day or two before calling the doctor, even. Honestly, I tried. But after about an hour or so, I was like fuck Zen! and impulsively the consulting nurse, who of course ordered me to come in right away "to get monitored," as I knew she would. And once that happened: BAM! I simply HAD to call up K, left without any choice but to inform him of my whereabouts!

"Hey dude," I said. "EVERYTHING IS OKAY, but I'm heading into the hospital so they can take a look at my cervix. I'M SURE THAT EVERYTHING IS OKAY, so don't worry. SINCE EVERYTHING IS OKAY, don't bother coming over here - just go do your guys' night as planned."

That led to him calling every fifteen minutes to check in as I lay there with little suction-cup thingies all over my belly and a monitor showing peaks and valleys of fetal heartbeats, even in the midst of his guys' night out.

Now, here's the part that makes me a self-serving little bitch, REALLY unlike my mother, or K's mother, or any other normal mature female who puts others before herself and looks after her "brood" if you could call it that: I actually kinda liked that he was getting up and leaving his guy-friends every so often to call, that he was using this particular worried-man voice that makes my heart go pitter patter. It's this kind of taut, serious male voice with undertones of concern. Not flipping out and bawling into the phone or anything, just this checking-in voice. I find it awesomely sexy. Awesomely awesome, actually, to be paid attention to.

What I really learned that night is this: as seasoned and wise and mature I'd like to think my KuKd past has made me, really I'm just as much the attention-loving fiend as I always was. I wonder if I'll ever be able to keep my own anxieties in check, setting aside my needs for the sake of others.

Oh, and one more thing this made me ponder: maybe the only reason people REALLY ever send care-packages to soldiers overseas is to make ourselves feel better. ;-)

(For the record, everything was OK, fetas-wise anyway. I discovered this morning that the blood is in my stools, not coming from "that other canal." I ran into the kitchen to announce this groundbreaking news to K, just so that - yes - so that someone else on the planet could be mildly concerned right alongside me. He was concerned, as I knew and hoped he'd be, and immediately Googled "blood stools during second trimester." Seems like it could be nothing, so I'm keeping an eye on it for now. It felt good, nonetheless, to have someone Googling on my behalf. See? See how self-serving I am?)

Comfort Zones and Cock-Blockers

2009-11-09T17:50:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC'ers Tribespeople and Inquisitive Guests!

Sometimes on this blog, I find myself tripping over words, wondering if certain feelings are okay to talk about. Like the great big pink box with the word "YAY!" on my last post. It was how I felt: yay. Holy yay, batman. But was it cool to be so yay-ish and all in public? Was it obnoxious of me? There was a point in writing that post when I sort of paused and looked out the window at Seattle's slate-gray sky, and thought: I'm tired of this post already. So I did myself a favor, at the very least, and kept it short. Ish.

A couple of weeks ago, some friends and I were sitting around the dining room table. One guy started to tell about some event coming up next week, stopped after the third word, and said: "Never mind. I'm already tired of my own story."

There are several things that make me feel that exact way whenever I talk about them in mixed company, and numero uno is my knocked-up-ness. Just plain tired my own story, like my lips are moving but really I'm thinking about bacon-wrapped bacon. Which is why I can't bring myself to say much about it here (pregnancy, not bacon), unless something really noteworthy is going on, like last week's first big heart test.

Oh, of course there are a very few key people I can vomit out words to about it for hours on end. I'm talking people like parents, husband, and two or three best-est of best-est friends who deliberately ask and want to know about the current condition of my uterus. And prego-buddies and their accompanying sperm-producers, who want to talk shop about names-n-stuff. To them, I can gladly give a shameless earful. But pregnancy? Here on this blog? With 99% of people in my life?

Nah.

Here's my current theory as to why that's the case.

This past weekend I caught up on some much-neglected blog-o-reading. And let me tell you, not that you don't know this already: there is a lot of sad, painful stuff going on out there among this great big group of KuKd/TTC blog-o-peeps. Perfectly decent, wonderful, goregous, goodhearted and intelligent women miscarrying - people who want nothing more than the one thing that so many others produce so easily: a biological child. People's IVF treatments failing. People realizing that they might not ever get this thing they want. People grappling with huge issues that force them to really take stock of their lives, make hard decisions, and come to terms with loss in their own way.

Now, I simply can't read about...say...Shaz's or Parenthood for Me's stories, feel intensely sad about that - which I do - and then plop down on the sofa with a big smile on my face and crank out some story about: "WOO-HOO BABY! LOOK AT ME AND MY PREGNANT SELF! GOD, MY BOOBS ARE JUST ACHING AND ENGORGED WITH PRE-MILKY PLEASURE! MY VAGINA IS RIPE AND ACHING TO BE STRETCHED TO DIAMETER OF A SOCCER BALL!"

Totally oustide my comfort zone. The words don't come to me. Instead, what comes to me are things like: is it okay for me to feel this one thing? And write about it here? Or will I be throwing myself irrevocably off that tightrope-walk that us KuKd-prego-gals have to walk, that we all are faced with when our cervical mucus vaccums up sperm unexpectedly and suddenly - KABOOM - we have that "it" that others don't have, but want? How in the name of hellfucked hell does one pay homage to their own excitements and other people's non-excitements at the same time? And can I do it here?

Not that my comfort zone is the right zone or the wrong zone (more likely wrong, which I usually am). And not that I don't enjoy reading about others' pregnancy ups-n-downs and pregnancy ticker-like updates, living vicariously through them even.

It's just that for me, personally, to post on and on about my knocked-uppage would give me this icky, yucky feeling of having forgotten my roots, forgotten about the core group of people who read this blog regularly, who have supported me since day one and beyond even through their own continued ups and downs. It would be as though I've left my impoverished hometown and won the lottery, only to return in a brand new Escalade with all my fance schmancy jewelry and gadgets. That's how it would feel.

So I remain humble as I feel, keeping my feet planted in the firm, damp, root-filled earth:

rooted alongside the KuKd Tribe I had so much trouble finding in "real life," and - was lucky enough to discover here.

(By the way, just to hammer in this point again: please don't take that as this preachy-ass "would all you happy pregnant people stop talking about it, please?" sort of message. Dude, I'm the last person to give out messages about anything in particular. It's just like, this is my comfort zone. That's it. Just like eating bacon: in my comfort zone. Tofu-loaf: not.)

* * *

For the record, even if I WERE to post something prego-related, it would be something really superficial that nobody in their right mind wants to hear about, like how Kevin recently accused my pregnancy pillow (see image below) of being a cock-blocker.

A cock blocker!

Look, I really don't see how a gigantic Great-Wall-of-China-sized pillow, firmly enclosing my multiple-layers-of-flannel-clothing-over-Texas-sized-Hanes-bloomers-underwear body, preventing me and Kevin from coming within 15 inches of one another before, during, and after bedtime, would be considered a cock-blocker!

Seems a bit of an extreme accusation to make.

Feeling Big

2009-11-06T16:32:00.001-08:00

Dear Mother Nature:

We're in the lead so far, bee-yatch! Us: one. You: zero. Despite your tetonic-plate forces shoving people's lives around, Fetus Causing my Torso to Swell (MFCTS) has thus far avoided your sneaky X-linked tricks (good job passing the first heart-test of your fetushood, MFCTS).

I feel big, bigger than this earth, bigger than the tsunami-hail-storm causing forces around me, bigger than my own huge belly. That's me: Big Fat Marge, Large and In-Charge. We humans are all the shit! We are all that and then some - in control of our destinies provided we eat our bran flakes, exercise for 30 minutes a day, brush our teeth, and occasionally do voluntary good works for society. Right? Right! Nothing can stop us from conquering the earth - not even you, Mother Nature! We are winning, you are losing!

* * *

Wait a minute. Isn't it you, Ma' Nature, that makes life in the first place? Aren't you the reason behind the MFCTS' current state of alive-n-thrivingness, thwarting your own tendency to randomly snuff out life? So...um...that must mean you're beating yourself! You're fighting yourself, and beating yourself! Ha ha! Joke's on you!

(?)

(thinking myself in circles)

* * *

Anyway. I'm happy. Kevin's happy. We had great sex today (the decadent rainy-afternoon kind) and now we're off to happy hour, if that's any indication. I'm ordering mozzerella sticks, too - deep fried-n-all. So there!

I don't want a KuKdx4 badge. Keep it, dude. KuKdx3 makes me a reproductive freak as it is. So x4, nuh nuh no. Beating Mother Nature so far makes me feel big, strong, arrogant, triumpant - more powerful than I know I really am. But I'm going to ignore that little bit of Debbie-Downer knowledge creeping in the back of my mind, and feel all artifically high on myself, high on that Fetus, surely a pro-football quarterback in the making. The fact that a Buddist scholar would tell me otherwise, remind me that WE HUMANS ARE PIDDLY LITTLE PAWNS AND NOT AS BIG-ASS BIG AS WE THINK WE ARE, well, I'm ignoring it for a sec. Because losing what you want makes you feel like a beaten down fool, so I'm reveling in the gloating for a minute.

Just for a minute anyway, until the next test comes around. ;-)

Feeling Small

2009-11-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Male Fetus Causing my Torso to Swell (MFCTS):

This week, you will go on a field trip to the Fetal Medicine department to have exotic machines pressed up against the roof of your current dwelling. We will get to watch colored waves of whatever move toward and away from our your heart in green, red and blue spurts of tiny dots. Those green, red and blue spurts of dots will get transferred to a moving line on monitor, which we will stare at dumbly alongside a bunch of people who are WAAAAYYYY smarter than you and me combined. And from that monitor, a bunch of crazy numbers will be generated, which will be charted and reviewed by even SMARTER people, if you can imagine. And then, someone will call us into a fluorsecent-lit room and tell us you're either okay, or you're not.

Why go through all of this? Well, look downward. See that tiny clump of appendages? Those are called your penis-n-balls, otherwise known as your Package, otherwise known as your Family Jewels. Cherish them, because they could end up getting you lots of girls in the future and possibly even a starring role in a porn flick. On the other hand, feel free to hate them, because they are what makes you a Male Fetus. And because you are a Male Fetus, you have high odds of being the keeper of an X-linked genetic heart problem. X-linked means it came from me, a fact about which you can give me flak for later (just know that for every bit of flak that you give, I'll put one dollar less in your college savings fund).

So, the machine pressed against the top roof of your current dwelling is simply something that the smarter-than-us people said we need to do, to check to see how the waves of whatever are going in and out of your heart. We'll do it now, and several times in the future - so get used to it.

Goodness, how terribly I, and everyone in our cautious family, want the news to be: everything is okay. If it's not, the contingency plan is to ditch work for a week, fly to wherever, and try to imagine life without you. Right now, as hard as I'm trying to be cautious about your existence, you're a part of my life - and I hope you stay.

Feeling small, like a tiny, teensy part of a huge world with tetonic plates and other natural forces that move beyond my control. Hopefully they won't push my family over again, swallow us up.

Arright, MFCTS! Machine coming to the roof of your house very soon - get ready! ;-)

Ode to the Baby Makers

2009-11-01T06:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings, KuKd Strong'Uns and Inquisitive Guests!

This post is about our perceptions, about how we view our baby-making friends. It's a post in honor of both ourselves and those friends who successfully make babies, and whose mere babies - mere milk-spurting boobs and casual comments about daycare or sleepless nights - cause many of us go ouch. It's an ouch moment because KuKd/TTC hurts women so awfully that it turns us into into alien lifeforms who don't feel the same joy around babies as normal people do (or as we ourselves used to do). For a while, anyway. We become like the ones who didn't get selected for the school drill team with all the popular girls, and we're forced - as mature adults - to do as our mothers would have told us to do back when we were awkward pre-teens: suck it up and be a good sport.

Now, just roll with me on this image here: picture that ONE blond, popular girl - the head of the drill team, so easy to hate because of all the things she has, all the parties you just know she gets invited to, how pretty she is, how she can do a full split in the air and land on her feet. You want to just shrivel up and just hate her to pieces because she's perfect, and she has it all:

The one in the middle. Yeah, that one.

And then, low and behold, she does the unthinkable: she comes up and acts nice to you, treating you like a human being, like a friend - almost unaware, it seems, of the many things she has that you don't, of how treacherous it is to talk to you, of how easily she could say something that would hurt your feelings. It's like, her pure goodness and niceness transcend the fact that she got it, whatever that "it" might be, and you didn't. And then you feel like an insecure shmuck for hating her in the first place.

So, you might already see where I'm going with this analogy (for the record, I was never ever ever brave enough - or even remotely able to imagine myself cool enough - to try out for the middle school drill team), and what the hell that pretty middle girl has to do with *DEAD BABIES!*DEAD BABIES!* (topic of this blog; please picture that phrase in flashing neon lights).

I'll get there, I swear. But first, brief diversion -the kind that people with mild to moderate attention deficit disorder despise. Some necessary background, and then back to the show.

* * *

The past month, I've been bedgrudgingly delving back into my book manuscript. For those of you who are kinda new here: about 4 months after Zach's dirth, I was sitting by myself on a stone ledge in Eduador's teeming capital of Quito feeling like a fat, dead-baby loser with an unnecessarily stretched vagina. It was here, in a small soggy notebook, that I started writing a memoir-ish thing. Not to publish, not because I viewed myself as a *real writer* - just something to write and read and keep and show my grandkids later. If I ever had grandkids. Which I probably wouldn't because my uterus was cursed and the thought of sex made me cringe. Fucker.

Anyway, when you start doing something like that, your mom - who is conditioned to love everything you do, even if it's crapola - goes, "Honey, this is great! You should try to publish it!" So you half-believe her and keep writing, having fun as you do it because it feel so damned good to get these stories out of your system. Next thing you know, a small press says, "Hey, this looks arright. I'll take it." Good timing, because by this point the therapeutic value of writing the story has long dried up, and you're now about so sick of your manuscript that you start calling it a "fuckyouscript" and toy with the idea of lighting it on fire.

But you can't move on yet, even if you're ready , because the publisher comes back and goes: "But wait! Fix these things, and then it'll be ready to go." So you sigh and whine to your husband, feeling like a college student trying to revise a great big project due next week when you'd rather get drunk and go cow-tipping. But finally you do it because you know you'd be screwing yourself if you didn't.

You go back to the beginning of your own story, back to the moment of "miscarriage" first becomes something other than a vague, bad thing that happens only to other people, or back when it first dawned on you that making a baby wasn't going to be as easy as your Catholic nun-teachers made it out to be.

And you start re-feeling those things that you felt at the time.

* * *

OK, back to the real post. Attention deficit disorder people, you can now turn off the cartoons and start listening again.

Right now, as I go back into past moments of my "fuckyouscript," I'm re-feeling old things, remembering what my (warped) perceptions were at the time. It's kind of trippy to do this, to jump out of my current mindset of here, back to a former mindset of there. It's not unlike reading an old handwritten journal from ten or twenty years ago, marveling at the things you thought and felt, how wrong you were in some ways, how insightful you were in others, how ridiculous you sounded in some regards.

I remember feeling like that kid who didn't make the drill team after miscarriage numero uno. Four months to have a miscarriage seemed wholly, stupidly wrong - and everyone else who made it past that 4-month gestation mark suddenly seemed reproductively better and luckier than me. Just out of spite, I wanted to start a KuKd goth club with other gals who "got it" - all of us wear black t-shirts that said something like "Screw You World! We Didn't Want Kids Anyway!" We would pierce our labia and wear black eyeliner and hang out at Denny's with angst-filled, pissed-off expressions on our faces. It would've been cool. I had it all planned out.

But the only friend I knew to invite into my club was J. I knew she'd had a miscarriage somewhere along the line. But it turned out she was hugely pregnant again- which automatically disqualified her from joining my now one-woman club. Dang it.

Later, when pregnant with Zachary, I met other amazing friends - N and C - who of course went on to have their babies (ie: made it to the school drill team!!) after Zach died. Classic story, right? J eventually had another baby, too. So my KuKd goth club remained a one-woman, lonesome affair, with me as president, treasurer, and secretary.

But here's what amazing, what I didn't understand back in during the time when my manuscript takes place, but what I now know through pure hindsight. They all stuck around fearlessly, fiercely, sweetly, confidently, and continued to view me as a friend and human being. Which is to say: they trusted themselves - even in this strange, foreign new reality that was filled with potential land-mines for all of us - to just be there. They were, in fact, like that pretty blond head of the drill team that still comes up and talks to you, even when you slink away with a bit L sign on your forehead.

Just think for a second about much courage it must take for a woman with kids or a kid-in-utero to come up and talk to a KuKd or even TTC woman, to be there for that person as a real friend, even knowing she has something that other person wants so desperately. Imagine how awkward and treacherous it must be for her, and how much easier it would be to run away and hide in Babyland forever. Think of how many opportunities there are to colassally fuck up and say something hurtful without even meaning to (does anyone EVER mean to say hurtful things?), something that will cause that KuKd/TTC woman to post a big'ol rant on her blog about "you'll never guess what insensitive thing so-and-so said to me!"

And why not rant about it? Losing a baby, not getting the baby you want to create, hurts like hell. Totally, undeniably valid feeling. I felt it myself. And I mean, god. All N had to do was like...look at me in a certain way, or mention her son's name once, and I'd go off into a depressed funk for the rest of the day. One offhanded comment from C about baby food or breastfeeding, and BOOM - hurt. I was like this hypersensitive sad person who you could touch with a light index finger and create this huge bruise for days, even weeks.

In hindsight, who in their right minds wants to be around someone like that?

* * *

Good, brave friends. That's who. So my point is this. I look back at my fuckyouscript and see this tug-of-war that was going on in my head back then: needed my baby-maker friends, but at the same time couldn't bear to be near them. For me, now, I need to give utmost credit to N, J and C who - although couldn't be a part of my doomed KuKd goth club, had the pure goodness of heart, courage, comfort in their own skins to not back away from me and Kevin, but keep being our absurdly supportive friends. They had the trust in me to someday return to a relatively normal mental state, one in which I could reciprocate the friendship and support them in return. And, although I'm sure they knew that some things they said - the kids they had - were hurtful to me just because of the way things were, they had faith in me as a human being to someday, one day, see beyond those little unavoidable thorns and embrace, accept the very real friendship lying beneath.

So yeah. I retreated for a bit, but held on. And looking back now, I was nowhere near the baby-supportive friend that they, in turn, needed in these huge moments of their own lives. But they all give me space and time to do that, forgiving me for sinking into my own mind-spaces and uber-neediness for a year-and-a-half or so. THANK GOD, too, because now we have dinner plans coming up - and I get to catch up with my amazing, brave, baby-making friends.

So, Ode to the Baby Maker friends who stick by.

Space, Cleaniness, and Human Feces

2009-10-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Mommas-n-Daddas-n-Guests...

Those of you who have been floating around the KuKd/TTC blog-o-planet for a while know that every so often, we talking-blogheads occasionally get awarded certain...um...awards by one another. It's actually a cool and amazing honor to be recognized by a fellow blogger in this way, and kind of makes me feel all glowing inside like an elementary student who just got a shiny star sticker on her quiz. Even though I dig such awards, I'm a terrible award recipient, because - rather than being grateful and doing what I'm supposed to do with those awards - which primarily involves posting answers to a certain question - I sort of let the awards sit on my "to do" list until it's pretty much too late to do'em. Same with most things in my life.

A common theme of a lot of these awards is that you get to list random things about yourself. To pay homage to the dusty and neglected heap-o-awards sitting around on my computer, I thought I'd crank out a few of these random tidbits. Which is hard - trust me - because I'm not the most exciting person and don't have any more juicy random tidbits than anyone else out there. Still, for what they're worth, here's a short and not very exciting list.

1) Personal Spacebox = Zilch.

A while ago, Murgan posted something about the general discomfort and irritation she feels with random people coming up and touching her pregnant stomach. Well, that post - coupled with my own husband's recent stitches in the crook of his right arm (will explain in sec) - gave me the sudden epiphany a few weeks ago: I have zero sense of personal space. Which is to say, I'm the exact opposite of Murgan. Anyone - I mean any old whoever - can come up and touch my belly, play with my hair, give me a bear hug, grab my ass - whatEVer - and I couldn't care less (unless, of course, it's an obviously sleazy person like the stringy-haired, pee-scented dude who sometimes sidles up next to me at the bus stop on 240th street).

Kevin's arm stitches are a case in point. I keep forgetting that they're there, those still-raw-and-painful arm stitches, which means I tend to accost his right arm without thinking - even when he loudly shrieks FUUCKKK! every time. I should learn by now. But I have no concept of space between humans, so I don't. Ah well, he's used to it.

2) Clean Gene= Zilch.

You know that gene that humans have - or at least, I've decided based on wholly unscientific research that most normal humans have - that causes us to feel uncomfortable and disturbed when we are surrounded by dirtiness? That gene that compels us to clean the house? I don't have that gene.

Which is to say, our house can be in a state of total disarray - dishes piled up, trails of my clothing and belongings scattered everywhere and left in piles in the bathroom, dust gathering on the floors, spaghetti sauce stains on the walls near the stove - and it's practically invisible to me. Kevin shakes his head in disbelief when I tell him our house looks fine . Likewise, I react the same way - shaking my head in disbelief - whenever Kevin vacuums the floors or washes the sheets. Frankly, I don't see the point of doing such things - because I simply don't SEE any dirt on the sheets or floors. I could go months, even years, without washing sheets or vacumming floors.

I don't have that Clean Gene.

3) I was covered in human shit when my husband fell in love with me.

Well, not exactly but pretty darned close - and somehow the first two random tidbits above seem like a nice segue into this. You might know this story already, but in case you don't, here's the nutshell version:

Boy meets girl while teaching English in Uzbekistan ("Ickistan," as the foreign service workers called this drab post-Communist country). Boy and girl are still "just friends" when they get completely trashed on cheap Uzbek vodka one night with a group of fellow Americans. Girl is squatting over a pit toilet to pee, foot slips as she's standing up, and entire leg goes "SPLOMFFFF!!" right into the heap of Uzbek/American-mixed human feces (yes - Uzbek pit toilets are THAT FULL -to where as you squat, you know your butt is like 2 inches above the top of the waste heap).

"GAHHHHHHH!" screams drunk girl.

"I'll save you!" screams gallant knight-boy, who rushes to her side and pulls girl, covered in human shit from toe to hip, from the toilet. Within a few weeks, boy and girl have kissed (with tongue!), and soon they're dating. Girl knows long before boy does: they'll get married someday, as soon as he realizes she's the one for him. Afterall, where on earth will she find another guy willing to go out with her after such a "shitty incident," no pun intended? Eventually he does, and they do. :-)

That's all, folks.

Pieces of Aliveness

2009-10-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

Howdy, KuKd/TTC-ers and Inquisitive Guests...

I was cleaning out the bedroom closet over the weekend, and came across a large paper grocery bag full of objects. It had "ZACHARY" written on it in big black marker, and was folded down at the top - I guess to keep dust from drifting into it. Or, maybe to give myself some sense of closing the lid on something, safekeeping something, protecting something.

I've known the bag was in there, underneath a pile of coats. Not purposefully underneath a pile of coats, just accidentally underneath a pile of coats because it seemed like a good place to toss coats. For the first time in...well...months, maybe? a year?...I pulled out some of the contents of this bag and examined them next to the natural light coming in through the window.

Mostly what's in here are "Zachary artifacts" that were placed into a decorative box, and then into a bigger bag, and given to us by the hospital staff. All you stillbirth mommas out there, you know what I'm talking about. Kevin and I called the whole package our consolation prize, as if we were losers on a game show.

We brought them home and spread them out on the bed, trying to figure out what we were supposed to do with them. Because, we all know dead-baby-land doesn't have any real rules or norms to follow. It's not like a wedding or a bar mitzvah, where all you have to do is type a few key words in Google and boom - out comes a bulleted list of social conventions. With stillbirth, you just kind of muddle along and make up shit to do.
It's not like the bag contained body parts or anything horrid. Just some locks of hair, some footprints, a charred and numbered disc of metal from the cremation service, a blanket, some other things.

I don't know. If he were a real live baby, we would have displayed them on the fireplace mantel (actually, never mind - we wouldn't have done that). But in this case, we just sort of looked at them up close - on the off-chance that they might make us feel better about the situation (which they didn't), then put them in a bag. In the closet. Which wound up under a pile of coats. Maybe to pull out later - ten or fifty years later, when some grandkid or nephew asks about "that one baby that didn't make it." Then we'd have something to show for this baby, preserved in a time capsule of sorts.

There were some other things in there, I discovered this weekend while reexamining the contents of this grocery bag full-o-sentimental goodies. There were some pages torn out of a spiral notebook with drawings I had scrawled, random things I wrote down, and for some reason felt compelled to save. One of those things was a list of what I called "Pieces of Aliveness," written on wrinkled lined paper and stained with a ring of coffee. So cliche, I know, but it was. The "Pieces of Aliveness" heading was in large block letters in black ballpoint pen, pressed hard on the page. This was a caffeinated little piece of prose, for sure. I swear, the handwriting almost looked wavey in parts, as though produced by a trembling and coffeed-up hand. Which it probably was.

ANYWAY. It was a list, which I recall writing in the middle of the night from our corner hospital room while Kevin snoozed on the floral sofa. We were waiting to deliver Zachary, who we knew was already gone. All those late-night informercials were only making me more depressed (there is something oddly alienating about watching grinning old people with their dentures, or hyperactive Asian dudes marketing their cooking knives at 3:00 in the morning), so I wrote my "Pieces of Aliveness" list in part to pass the time.

Basically, it was a list of ordinary little things that had always made me happy (well, at least since I was old enough to think about such things), and that I was hoping would contine to serve as sources of joy. Mostly I just wanted a reminder of these things that make me a living, normal human. I found it comforting to make a list of them.

Here's a abridged sampling of my Pieces of Aliveness:

"the satisfying 'stsssssss' of a cushiony toilet seat releasing air when you stand back up"

"the 'rrraaaarr' of sinking your teeth into a sugar, frostingy cupcake"

"the 'sheeeeoooop' of blue painters tape being ripped off after a paint job"

"the 'mmmmrrrrphhh' of a Q-Tip being swirled around in the inner ear canal, where it's not supposed to be"

"the strip of shaven skin left after a razor is dragged up the calf"

"the sizzle of an egg cooking to perfection"

"the 'thunk' and feel of a nail clipper on toenails"

"the 'yoosh-yoosh' of mascara being perfectly applied, and the way it looks afterward"

"the 'eeet! eeet! eeet!" of wiping Windex on glass, and the subsequent sparkle"

"the 'aaaahhhh' of a cute man playing with my feet"

"the euporic 'yaaaaaa' of immediately after a good puking session"

"the 'zing-bap-bow!' of purposely annoying the crap out of grumpy old men, and eventually winning their hearts'

* * *

I think I might stuff this list, and some of the other things from the Zachary bag, and bury them in the back yard as a time capsule. Or, I could just make it easy on myself and keep it in the closet. I'm pretty sure that all of these still apply, thankfully. The last one: well, of course I still love annoying old cranks. I don't think the dude in that picture would make the cut, though. To me, he looks a little bit creepy, like Lester the Molester.

Veggie Burritos and Scary Memos

2009-10-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTC Mommas, Daddas and Guests!

This is a two-part "story" with an upbeat, bean-related ending. Got that?

First, how do you explain the relationship a woman has with her growing fetus? Intimate, strong, kindred, private? It's such a mother-fetus partnership, the immense job of growing a clump of cells into a living, breathing human. Doesn't matter who else is involved -husbands, parents, siblings, friends, doctors. At the end of the day, it's you and fetus hanging out together - and that's it.

Which means - for me - that things going on with the fetus are fodder for my most private anxieties, joys, and imaginings every day. This particular bugger is an active fetus for the most part, much more active than Zachary ever was. He bumbles around in there all day, doing whatever fetuses do. I don't question what he's up to, or spy on him with a home-ultrasound device to check for beer and bongs in his "room." I just trust that he's having an okay time.

Without even requesting it, I was given the job of raising and protecting this particular fetus. It came like a memo from Mother Nature, out of the blue: "This notice is to inform you that you have been tranferred from the Booze-Guzzling, Sex-Having Workaholic Department to the Responsible Baby-Growing Department, effective immediately. Please report to your new post starting today. And for fuck's sake, quit drinking so much coffee."

I feel like somethings just come to us that way: grim medical news, happy medical news. Things just hit us by surprise and boom, we're expected to deal with it. Now that it's my nature-imposed duty to keep watch over this fetus, I have no choice but to take my job seriously. Well, as seriously as a serious slacker like me can possibly take something.

There were several days in a row last week when I stopped feeling the fetus kickin' it in the womb. Oh, I could've gone in to the doctor for a fetal-aliveness check, but I'm trying so hard not to be the sort that goes in for aliveness-checks all the time. Instead, I decided to sit this one out before jumping to conclusions, which cast a film of dull, translucent fear on my mood - probably not unlike what it must feel like to work for a big company and then hear rumors of massive lay-offs. You just go through the motions of the day - in this case, the pregnancy, knock on wood and hope that everything isn't about to end. Even breakfast at Denny's didn't taste as splendid as it usually does, because usually, I can feel little fetal flips while I chewing on my prime-rib-n-eggs special. Somehow that makes the food taste extra-good.

I was missing those flips, man.

Then, this bizarre picture unfolded in my mind, a scene of myself getting yet another surprise memo from Mother Nature. A little, heavenly-white colored sheet of paper folded into a square, suddenly dropping out of the sky and fluttering directly into my hands. I saw myself unfolding the sheet of paper and reading its contents:

“Due to a company-wide reduction in force, you have been demoted from Baby-Grower to a lower-grade position, effective immediately.”

That “lower-grade” position was different every time I thought about this absurd scenario, but always something horrible that I’d never want to do. Something like telemarketing sub-prime loans, or soliciting Green Peace signatures on the street corner. And it never involved the enigmatic, fluttering little fetus I’ve been raising in my pelvis for the past 19 weeks.

Hey, knowing Mother Nature, I wouldn't put it past her to pull some shit like that.

* * *

Plot shift! Plot shift! Things returned to normal on Thursday, when BOOM - the fetus returned to his normal, ever-wiggling self. Who knows what accounted for that brief period of stillness. Anyway, I felt the world had been set right.

Which leads me to the promised bean-related ending. With fetus back in full swing and my fears of getting laid-off from the Baby-Growing department alleviated, I was able to relax and shift my attention to the cooking experiment I'd had lined up all week. I wasn't in the mood to try it earlier, because when I'm nervous, I lose all inspiration to cook - subsisting instead on bowls of cereal.

This particular cook-job had to do with a bag of Trader Joe's pre-sliced strips of sweet potato, which I'd bought on a whim but was suddenly clueless about what to do with them.

I'd decided to try high-fiber vegetarian burritos from scratch, not just to use up those sweet potatoes, but also to lend a helping hand to the Poop Elves in my colon. You may recall my earlier reference to Poop Elves, the little men who I imagine living inside everyone's colons, pushing waste out of your body with synchronized chants of "heave-ho!" They need help, sometimes - and there's nothing like a high-fiber meal to give them the support they need to do their bowel-moving job.

First, I sauteed some onions in a great big pan with olive oil.

Next, I added the sweet potato strips, plus some cut-up zucchini for some extra je-ne-sais-quoi, sauteeing everyting together.

Of course, beans had a starring role reserved in this dish, just for them! No high-fiber burrito is complete without a heaping helping of "fart-causers," as Kevin affectionately calls them.

I decided to throw in the rest of this bag of sweet roasted corn, which had been lurning in my freezer for an unknown number of months (or years?).

All of that got tossed in the great sautee, along with the juice of a full fresh lemon, cut-up tomatoes, a bit of frozen spinach, plus vast quantities of cumin, chili powder, and garlic salt.

After all this fibery goodness had been sufficiently sauteed, I had mine over a bed of rice with sour cream and guacamole on the side, and fresh cilantro sprinkled on top. Even Kevin, the ultimate skeptic of all-veggie dinners, enjoyed this one - opting to eat his like a real burrito, stuffed into a great big tortilla. I decided not to tell him about the high fiber content. Best he (and his Pool Elves) figure that one out on his own, which I'm sure would happen during his next run to the bathroom.

* * *

And now: Poop Elves happy, fetus happy, Monica happy. And no unexpected memos from Mother Nature. How simple is that? :-)

Lightening Up

2009-10-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Guests-n-Mommas!

Lately, I've been in the mood to lighten up.

That mood creeps up on me with inordinate frequency, an inexplicable urge to giggle at something otherwise terrible or disgusting. I'm not sure if it's an Irish thing or just some weird, psychological inability to deal with trauma in a normal way. I do know that even on the very day when shit went down with little Zachary, I was wandering around the radiology floor on Kevin's arm, laughing at something silly. (For the record, Kevin was laughing too, and he's my barometer for what behavior is within the limits of social and societal normalcy, I figured it was okay. If a Catholic-bred son of a Marine Corps colonel can do it, I can do it.)

Anyway, this particular recent urge to "lighten up" has been related more to my physical appearance and my house than to my actual mood (although I suppose "mood" is probably intertwined with that somehow).

Let's start with the hair. Mine has been about this length for year and years, give or take a few inches:

Heavy, boring, blah. Guys like to brush it off your face, and kids like to touch it with their snotty swine-flu-infested fingers, but otherwise it's pretty useless. The past few weeks, I was in the mood to lighten up that part of myself. Low and behold, the perfect opportunity came up over the weekend, when I was invited to a "haircut brunch" at a friend's house. I was skeptical at first, because it sounded like one of those things that housewives do, like hosting a Tupperware party or a jewelry exchange. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those events - just not my cup of tea.

But I sucked it up and went because I knew the people there would be cool, and because - after all- this was a chance to lighten up.

A "haircut brunch" goes like this, in case you aren't sure:

Some peeps get together for brunch, and one of the gals at the brunch is supposedly a professional hair cutter, and you don't have any proof of this but you take her word for it, and you sit in a chair while scarfing down pieces of fried bacon, and she goes snip-snip-snip directly onto your dry (and in my case, several-days-unwashed) hair, and lots and lots of your hair falls straight onto the living room floor, and everybody laughs and says you look great, and you nervously ask for more bacon and pray that you aren't going to walk out of that house looking like Sinead O'Connor.

But you don't end up looking like that. You end up looking like this:

And you walk out of there feeling all layered and choppy and sassy, with the cool autumn breeze on the nape of your neck and a bellyful of bacon, and your husband touches it right away and tells you how good you look. And then you beam proudly - because in the end it's still those immediate reactions that matter most - and give him a kiss, flip your head upside-down and flip it back up just to give it some extra volume, and say a quick "thanks" to the Great Being Above that you live in a contemporary society in which women can get haircuts like this at their every whim and not be viewed as some kind of rebel-prostitute-freak.

* * *

Next, lightening up of the house. There's only so much you can do with a tiny house in the city. And one of those things is: paint.

Sometime while biking through Eastern Europe last summer with all those drab post-Communist buildings whizzing by, I felt suddenly inspired to paint everything in the house a dark marigold-yellow color. I want bold, exotic, international, exciting! I told Kevin over a dinner of hot beef gristle and 9% alcohol beer. Bright, goldspun yellow the color of an Indian spice market! He had his doubts, but - that being...oh, about a year after Zach's death - I found myself still position to legitimately pull the dead-baby-momma-gets-whatever-dead-baby-momma-wants card.

"Okay," he said, "but that's all you."

So in a caffeine-induced frenzy, the walls got painted soon after our return:

Well, over the past two weeks I began to feel weighed down by that bold marigold-yellow. I know, I know; I only threw that paint up there a year ago, and really it should have a chance to sit there on the walls, fester a bit longer and enjoy itself. But once I got it in my head that I was sick of the color, there was no stopping me. In fact, it wasn't just the yellow I was tired of: I was done with colored walls of any sort. Time to return to something more...um...virginal.

"Let's switch over to white," I told Kevin. Plain old, ho-hum white trim with slightly off-white walls. We need to lighten the whole house up."

I wanted to feel like I was floating up into a cloud of lightness inside this house. Kevin did cast me the glance of "here we go again," but refrained from making some typically rational comment about how we "can't keep repainting every wall year after year" as I half expected he would. I think that's because this new painting endeavor happened to coincide perfectly with an existing plan, which was to:

1) "lighten up" our hardwood floors by getting them refinished
2) "lighten up" our furnishings by replacing old/clunky with new/slim
3) get rid of our kitchen table and replace it with a small bistro set

So, adding a bit of painting to all that didn't seem like such a big deal, I guess. Yippeee! So, within a few weeks, our house got as light as my new hair-do:

I know, it's so...um....white! So Ikea! So metrosexual condominium! But having that marigold yellow gone like five inches of heavy brown hair is, in fact, like a great superficial weight off my shoulders.

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Phase two in Operation Lighten Up: the paunch belly and rapidly increasing thigh-diameter. That's a whole new beast of a phase, though. If only I didn't love food so very, very, very much...

Relapsing

2009-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings, KuKd/TTCers and Guests Alike!

There's something else that inward-sucking "hee-yoop" sound is, other than the insane suckosity of my cervix and the roar of an airplane toilet:

It's the sound of...drumroll please...taking a drag off some big'ol joint of negativity, sucking up that juicy awfulness until you're high. High on pain, that is.

Anyone can be a Pain-a-Holic. Just take any condition, any stressful event: diabetes. Food allergies. Death in the family. Loss of a job. Depression. Weight problems. Marriage problems. Money problems. Infertility. Baby loss. Now, think of someone you know who wears that condition like a comfy bathrobe: it comes up in every conversation. It colors everything they say or do or think. It prevents them from risking this or that, from feeling happy about whatever. It's like a friend to them, this ailment or event or condition, and anchors them to some rut in the ground, keeping them from drifting upward. They could let it go, but that's a scary prospect; think of the withdrawal symptoms that would invoke! No wonder they keep it around like an old annoying-but-loved friend.

Take it from me: once you get that first taste of aching awful pain, it's a hard habit to kick. After the stillbirth, I got used to that particular "condition" of being a dead-baby momma. It hung around, that smoky pain-smell saturating my clothes and hair and skin, and I clung to it like a raggity old comfy bathrobe. It protected me from a lot of things, giving me a gloriously rightful reason to burst into tears at odd times, and provided a safe excuse for avoiding dangerous situations. Six months, a year later: of course I couldn't be around babies, around pregnant women. Of course, of course, of course.

Then I started feeling insecure about my grief at one point, maybe a year or so after the Event, as though the real down-n-dirty shock and sadness had passed, and what was left was some kind of drugged-out, candy-coated, corrupt form of leftover backwash grief. Almost this fake, high-feeling, grief-like sensation that wasn't really grief, more just like I'd sniffed gasoline and was doing crazy things as a result. Like breaking down suddenly or snapping at Kevin and blaming it on the stillbirth. Always the stillbirth's fault. I was a classic Pain-a-holic.

In early spring this year, I started feeling...freed somehow, as though this vague weight was being lifted gradually off my shoulders. I began to notice that I wasn't really talking about dead babies anymore, or thinking about Zachary every hour like I used to. With a few exceptions, being around babies and knocked-up ladies didn't bother me anymore, for the most part.

(For the record, I credit this "recovery," I guess, to the simple passage of time, for it certainly had nothing to do with anything I was doing. I was never one to actually work on healing or recovering, or even grieving properly. I just took hits blindly and emoted haphazzardly, skipped the support groups and books and yoga and what-nots, drank a shit-ton of coffee and beer, and hoped for the best.)

So yeah, time was what it took. I felt I had sobered up.

* * *

These past few weeks, I've felt like I'm relapsing. It's coming back, creepy crawly stillbirth-momma-condition clinging to me, like an old drug buddy just offered me a bong hit "just for the fun of it" and I said what the hell. Now it's back - that pain-high. It's the pregnancy that does it, I'm pretty sure, for that's the only variable that's really changed as of late.

Here was my first clue: a buddy at work whose wife is 12 weeks pregnant e-mailed to see if Kev and I had talked about baby names yet. I could've just said "no" like a normal, sober, clear-minded human being. But I just had to gussy up my reply with more dramatic than that, something like this:

"No, we haven't started thinking about names, since this is our fourth pregnancy. There's a 50% chance this won't work out anyway since it's a boy, so we're just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping a living baby will come out of it. Then we'll name him."

Immediately after hitting "send," I felt bad. I wished I could have taken it back. It was like this old-me coming through all of a sudden, the gloom-n-doom me who was high on pain for a year-and-a-half, dredging it up and wearing it boldly, daring anyone to challenge it.

Why couldn't I give this guy just a simple, friendly response without bringing up that whole bitter truth? Why not just let him have his innocent and happy little e-mail exchange with a fellow expecting parent? What was I hoping for - some kind of sympathetic response? I felt like one of those people I've always been afraid to become: putting it out there all the time - I'M A DEAD-BABY MOMMA AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT! - to the point where the world grows tired of the subject, and, even worse, to the point where I'm really just clinging to this pain-crutch as an excuse to not engage in normal discourse with another human.

Here's where I was hoping all of that old emotion would go, once I started feeling something toward this current pregnancy other than "oh fuck:"

Yup, shed to the floor like a snake skin. What I want to be is this: an innocent, perky, fresh-faced, fresh-minded knocked-up gal whose eyes light up at Motherhood Maternity, who can in fact indulge the pesky cashier with personal information and due dates without becoming a hypersensitive bitch from hell, who can eagerly engage in e-mail conversations with other expecting parents about car seats and slings other baby-related crap. I was that preggo person once, way back when.

But now, the old sludge follows me around and I can't seem to shake it: a darkened arc of anxiety rising up sometimes, eclipsing the turquoise arc of happy hopefulness that comes when I feel little fetal feet fluttering against my insides. There IS that 50% risk thing for this boy fetus, too dreadful and incomprensible for my own mind to process, and best saved for another post when I'm really on a pain-high.

For now, I'm going to focus on being a normal, sober person with a naked, hopeful heart.

And cheeseburgers. I'm focusing on cheeseburgers.

Laughing Through the Pissed-ness

2009-10-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Howdy KuKd/TTCers and Inquisitive Guests,

Boy, am I pissed! And boy, am I smiling through the pissedness!

But before I dive into smiling-rant-mode, let me start with the warm-n-fuzzy: thanks - of course - for the outpouring of support and congrats and all the wonderful things that I was hoping I'd manage to milk from the crowd. I love that stuff. I inhaled it like a cocaine-dusted cappucino cupcake. And thanks for not thinking of me as a completely insane freak, or - if you did think of me as such - withholding that information for now. I like knowing that other people have their fingers crossed for this maybe-baby. It makes me feel less alone inside my head.

You are now hoping this will now become a pregnancy-ticker kind of blog, aren't you? Complete with dancing infant-cherub graphics circling in loops around the text, and a flashing time-counter displaying the precise number of days and minutes until the due date? You want weekly (or daily!) ultrasound images displayed, specifically those 3-D kind that make a fetus resemble a Claymation alien, with genetalia enthusiastically circled in white marker. After my last post, you ran off to tell your friends and neighbors: GUESS WHAT! This blogger named Monica is this thing called 'pregnant' - it's a really unique and exotic condition that, nobody else on earth ever experiences! I hope she narrates every living second of it in great detail!

Right?

Well, sorry to be the breaker of bad news, but this isn't going to be a pregnancy-ticker kind of blog. Hell, you might not even hear a single solitary peep out of me about this "Normal Male" (direct quote from the laboratory) until he/it emerges from my pelvis in one form or another - not unless something extraordinarily interesting or hilarious happens. Not because I'm specifically avoiding the topic, but because what's there to say, really?

It's a fetus. It's a pregnancy. It's a condition that - just by being what it is - stings to hear about if you're a TTC/infertility-fighting sister. I realize that. It's a pregnancy just like any other of the godzillions of pregnancies that occur all over the world. It resulted from two people boinking like bunnies. It might result in a baby. It might not. I hope it does. I fear it won't. I'm getting fat. I eat lots of red meat and pickles. I still drink coffee, just about 1/200th of what I used to. I had a few deliciously naughty sips of Kevin's Curveball Ale in bed the other afternoon, where we were lying in a naked state after some deliciously naughty (if not slightly cumbersome) sex. I sleep during the day, and wake up fretfully at night. I get nosebleeds throughout the day. I feel flutters that could be fetal twig-limbs, or just gas from prune-overdose. That's it.

See how boring that is? There's SO much more riveting stuff to talk about, such as the fact that:

I'M PISSED!

* * *

Did I mention that I'm pissed? Did I say that at the beginning of this post, or did I forget? In case I forget, let me repeat:

I'M PISSED!

It it has to do with a corporate chain store, specifically this one hulking bitch called Motherhood Maternity, which preys on excited pregnant ladies ready to spend their cash. I went there yesterday, braving the Saturday afternoon mall-crowds, despite my better judgment, despite the knowledge that the employees there are ravenously sales-oriented, fake-perky, relentless about soliciting personal contact information and baby due dates so they can "keep track" of such things and send you lots of crap in the mail forever. At least they did back when I shopped there a few times in 2007, a fact about which I was grimly reminded for about 1.5 years after Zach's death with monthly formula samples and "your child just turned one! here's a 50%-off coupon for blah-blah-blah!" (I did call to stop these mailings, but was ignored - so I began using them as toilet paper and snot-scrapers).

I had a goal when I went back to Motherhood Maternity yesterday: to buy one simple item, an elastic band that you wear around the top of your regular pants when you start looking like this, and can no longer button your jeans:

Muffin top, muffin top.
Lovely beautiful muffin top.
I know it's the burgers, not being knocked up.
But eating is great, and I shall not stop!

ANYWAY.

I brought my elastic tummy-band to the counter and handed over my credit card. Predictably, the perky cashier asked when my due date was so she could put it "in the system."

Now, most pregnant girls, I realize, would eagerly and excitedly squeal something like: MARCH 15th! It's a boy! His name is going to be Snuffy! We're so excited! Thanks so much for asking, for wondering, for CARING about me! You must really care about your customers! I LOVE this store! You guys are like my best friend! I'll be back here LOTS of times! With my money! So we can talk about my due date again and you can help me by cute clothes!!!!

"Um, I actually don't like giving out that kind of information, " I said.

She sort of blinked at me and then narrowed her eyes a bit, probably thinking by now: ah. One of THOSE tight-assed, tight-walleted, tight-lipped customers. Not the type of gushing, bubbling shopper we like and expect in here.

"Well, I'll just pick a random date for you, then," she said, "just so we have something in the system. Have you been here before, so I can look you up?"

"No," I lied. Really, it was in the best interest of everyone to withhold the truth: her interest, my interest, and the interest of the growing line of silent women forming directly behind me. No need to bring up my prior shopping experiences there, that little reminder of a past...era, you could call it.

"Really? You haven't been here before?" She was eyeing me suspiciously. "What's your phone number?"

"I'd rather not say," I said. For in saying my phone number, she might in fact find me in the system, which would give away my bold-faced lie.

"Address, then?"

"We've moved around a lot, and we're moving again soon. So I don't, um, really have an address."

This was beginning to feel like a police interrogation session, not a shopping experience at the mall. You know, the big goof-up that interrogated criminals always make in movies is that they say too much, and then they end up saying something that contradicts something they said earlier, getting themselves deeper and deeper into a web of lies. I should have known that, but instead, I muttered: "Last time I did that, you guys sent me junk mail and baby formula samples for like...a year and a half. Anyway, what's the total? I'm kind of in a hurry."

"So you HAVE been here before!" she said. "I knew it!"

She ran credit card through the little machine, and I heard a little affirmative beeping sound, cringing at the sound of it.

"See? You're right here! Monica LeMoine. You came in here...let's see....2007 with a baby due in October. So this is your second child! Your other one must be...what...just two years old now? How exciting is that!!!"

Well, fuck. ExACTly what I was afraid of, that it would lead to this awkward and staticky moment, the women behind me silently waiting and overhearing our every word, not even any background music to talk beneath. Didn't I call it? So what do ya do? You have four options.

1) Grin and lie, just to save everybody face. "Yeah! The kid is fine! Just turned two! This is my second kid I'm pregnant with now! You're so right! It's like, so exciting I'm about to shit my motherfucking pants! WOO-HOO BABY!"

2) Get a steely look and hit her with the truth: the hardcore, sludgy, emotional, gloppity-gloop truth. Just put it right out there for everybody to feel awkard about. She sort of deserved to have that particular mudpie thrown in her face, wouldn't you say?

3) Pretend to have a seizure and suddenly collapse on the floor so the mall security has to come and cart you away. That way, you get to avoid answering her question. You don't get your muffin-top stopper, but no big deal - they have them at Target.

4) Change the subject abruptly to something completely random. "Oh, by the way, do you have any advice for excessive vaginal discharge? I mean, I know you're a sales associate and not a doctor, but I thought that...since...you're like my best friend all of a sudden, you might be able to give me some girlfriend-wisdom."

* * *

I went with option two. I hindsight, I wished I'd had the ingenuity and/or calmness of spirit to go with 1, 3, or 4. But two was the one that happened.

"Um, that kid was stillborn. Which is why I don't like giving out my mailing address - because you kept sending me stuff for a like eighteen months afterward even though I called to have that stopped."

And ya know what? She reacted the way I guess any old schmuck might have:

SHE LAUGHED!!! Kind of a smirky chuckle, rather, and said: "Noooo."

It was the sort of "noooo" you say when someone tells you something and you can't tell if they're being sarcastic, or you flat-out think they're pulling the wool over your eyes. As if you're listening to someone who lies and jokes about stuff all the time, lying as I'd lied just now, so you don't trust them to tell the truth. Or, perhaps it was it just too much for her little pea-brain to handle, the brutal notion that something *bad* might happen (gasp!), even in the midst of the happy bouncy fluorescent retail lighting and the happy bouncy maternity clothes and posters of happy bouncy pregnant women gracing the walls! Even in happy bouncy Motherhood Maternity land, where EVERYone yammers about due dates and stocks up on clothes and is just thrilled to be a part of this awesome world!

"I'm serious. He died."

The quiet line of ladies behind me suddenly got quieter, and somebody coughed. The lipsticked cashier kind of looked at me in this strange way, as if seriously debating whether to believe me or not - I could see this little mental machine behind her narrowed eyes, ticking away.

"Well, okay then. That'll be $16.99, please." (overpriced, yes, but a necessary accessory)

And it was all business from there on out. Print receipt, sign, simple nod of "thanks," and then "NEXT PLEASE!"

As I was scurrying out of there clutching my bag, I hear her ask perkily and with great hopes for a return to normalcy: "So! When's YOUR due date?"

* * *

It was one of those experiences that felt like I'd been sucked up into an alternate universe, forced to engage in awkward discourse with a stranger who spoke a totally different language, and then spit back out into the mall parking lot. I guess she had a right to laugh disbelievingly, for I was being a bit of a pill, after all, what with all my cranky withholding of personal information AND straight-up lying to her face. I cranked up the hip-hop station and jammed to Jay-Z on my drive home, and it wasn't until I pulled up in front of our house and turned off the engine that it came, as it sometimes does: an awareness.

Awareness, suddenly, of something not being there. Hollow shell of a child, invisible yet with a glassy outline like Wonder Woman's cartoon airplane, toodling around my feet and cramming Cheerios into his mouth. A two-year-old, not there. You'd think you wouldn't notice somebody not being there any more, two years later. I mean, it's not like I still miss my Smashing Pumpkins Gish CD years years after I accidentally tossed it into the garbage pile when we left Arkansas. But I guess CDs are babies are different. Who knew.

Fortunately - happy ending, happy ending! - my muffin-top is now happily contained, and last night I hit a night club with my brother and a gaggle of friends. We shook our booties to a hip-hop DJ, and - the best part - even Kevin made it out to the dance floor. After a few shots of tequilla, that is.

Who said mommies of invisible glass-outlined kids who aren't really there can't dance! :-)

Tales of Sucking Sounds, And More

2009-09-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Y'all!

Well, shit. This is a post I've been dreading writing.

Don't get all excited - nothing juicily awful is happening. Well, I guess some might think it's juicy in certain ways. I've just had some serious writer's block and can't seem to coax the words out regarding this particular...thing. It's like being linguistically constipated. But I'll give it a shot right now, and hope that whatever streams out onto the keyboard makes at least moderate sense. Oh, and it does have to do with that inhaled "hee-yoop" sucking sound from a few posts back, so hooray.

Where to begin?

I know: let's take it back to one sunny day in the middle of July, this past July, about a month after I'd posted about my grating tocophobia - that was, intense fear of having a child. On this particular sunny July day while Kevin was at work, I found myself lying on the soft grass beneath a tree at the neighborhood park, crying probably more uncontrollably than I have in a long time, and watching big fluffy clouds roll across the sky through a blurry film of tears. I had a crying-headache and I'd forgotten a Kleenex, so I blew my nose on a leaf.

(Leaves are not the best snot-absorbers, for the record).

The whole day felt like an out-of-body experience. My legs propelled me home from the park, straight to the phonebook, as I sobbed intermittently like a kid who'd been bullied at the school yard. In fact, that's kind of how I felt: bullied around. I felt like life or God or someone up above - that big Darth Vader being controlling the gears - was fucking with me. My hands flipped through the white pages, easily finding what I needed: Planned Parenthood. My fingers dialed, my mouth asked:

"How much does the abortion pill cost, and how long do I have to take it?"

"Six-hundred dollars. You have until eight weeks after conception."

"Cool. Thanks."

Click.

Which brings me to the hee-yoop sucking sound. In a bizarre twist of reproductive fate, it had to have been THAT VERY WEEK in June - one month earlier when I'd posted about my tocophobia - during which (as my doctor put so elegantly) a wee-bit of spooge got near my crotch and my cervix eagerly went:

HEE-YOOP! Sluuuurp! Sucking up that sperm like a starved camel in the desert. In fact, I may very well have been pregnant when I WROTE that post!

"But...I can't be knocked up!" I told my doctor after skeptically providing a pee-test. "We were diligently doing the pull-n-pray method! My friend Jen's sister said that method works! And she has...like...a degree in public health or something, for fuck's sake! I. Can. Not. Be. Pregnant."

"Monica, you're pregnant."

Crap, I thought.

Followed by:

"Infertility sisters of the blog-o-sphere: I'm sorry that my cervix did an inward sucking hee-yoop. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. If I could give you my eagerly sperm-eating cervix with it's apparently gloriously raw-eggwhite-textured, soul-sucking stickiness, I would. I'd fed-ex it to you overnight. Something cosmically warped and unfair is happening right now, and I can't stop it. I'm sorry."

Look. I have no idea why I wanted to stop this pregnancy, why my first instinct was to slam on the breaks. Never claimed to know how the human mind works, the post-KuKd mind works, where fear comes from, how fear extends its roots deep into the mind and morphs into something bigger and scary than it really is. All I know is that when I suddenly got nauseous and puked that morning in July, I knew I was knocked up - and I was. But there wasn't any joy in this - only terror and weirdness.

* * *

Remember that post about plans, back in late July? About my going to see a shrink, about how having a child simply didn't fit into my new *plan* of living a kid-free life with all the unfettered joys and liberties that entails?

"What are plans, anyway?" She told me, that blond therapist. "They're a defense mechanism we create inside our heads to make us feel like we have control over something. But we don't. Forget about your notion of plans, because it's a made-up concept."

So yeah, the shrink. That was a few weeks after I'd stared, disbelievingly, at the pink plus-sign in the bathroom. Kevin was undecided, open to whatever - but I think he knew, as I did, that I was...well...not acting exactly rationally. Before rushing into Planned Parenthood, he said, maybe going to see a therapist would be a good idea - just to sort out things in my head. So that visit was really about this:

ME, toting strong black tea in a mug: "I'm knocked up and feeling really scared and resentful about it. This is my 4th time getting knocked up and I've never, ever, ever felt this way. I've got another week or two to decide if I want that abortion pill. What in the name of god is wrong with me?"

"You've had a history of miscarriage and stillbirth," she said. "It's normal to feel cautious."

"I really didn't want a baby right now. Wasn't a part of the plan. The *plan*," I told her, "was to drink and travel and have lots of sex for the next five years. Then maybe - maybe - revisit the babymaking idea. We already have our tix to Ireland, even."

That's where I got the whole plan-lecture. Sigh. She was right.

* * *

Crazy things: that's what she asked me to do as part of my...um.."therapy." But then again, I deserved to be asked to do crazy things, since I was kind of acting...well...crazy scared, crazy impulsive. Namely, she asked me to write a letter to the fetus.

"What? Why? This is weird."

"Go on. Here's a notebook. Try writing 'Dear Fetus.'"

I felt really self-conscious doing this fucktarded activity, but I cooperated like a submissive resident of a mental hospital, and I wrote it: Dear Fetus.

"Good. Now, write: I'm afraid of having something come into my life that I can't control. I'm afraid of having my plans burned yet again. I'm afraid of attaching to you, because I might lose you. If I were really connected to you, here's what I would do differently."

It was a lot to write, but I did it.

"Good, now make a list of some things. For example, you told me you would have told your parents by now, your friends."

"Yeah."

"You wouldn't care about giving up your Guinness while you're in Ireland. That wouldn't bother you so much."

"Yeah."

There were a few more things, and my "homework" was to finish that list later on, at home. I told her I would, but I never did. I don't like getting tasks from people.

* * *

The universe inside my head began to subtly shift as the summer went on. The abortion urge fizzled away, the fear - lots of it - fizzled away, too. I got distracted with life's little things - traveling, biking, working, that damned rash on my lower back. And gradually, low and behold, a feeling I hardly expected began to settle in - quiet, hesitant, shy, barely perceptible:

excitement.

It crept up on me unexpectedly like a tide lapping in, pushing fear and insanity out: vague thoughts of baby-related stuff, imaginings of a warm infant to come.

* * *

So, there's a grapefruit-sized fetus inside my pelvis right now. I'm four months along. It's a boy, this one, which we know from early testing. I could name him something just for reference purposes - like a holding card for developing infants - something cutesy and fun like I've seen other people do - Baby Boo-Ya or Lil' Pumpkin. But I'd kinda rather just ride this tide out for a while longer, takin' things day by day around here. That's how we roll.

Third boy in three years, fourth pregnancy of my life. Cautiously optimistic? God, that sounds so cliche and over-said. But yeah: I'm telling the gatekeepers up at the MTV Realworld Penthouse for Bitchin' Stillborn Babes not to keep the lights on for this particular little bugger, but maybe just hang around to let the door open, just in case.

Man, a whiskey would taste good right now. Do they make any kind of O'Douls equivalent of the hard stuff? :-)

Neighborly Loveliness

2009-09-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Potlucky Types!

I'll explain that reference in a minute. First, excerpt from an e-mail from my mother via an Internet cafe in Croatia, in my response to my earlier message about looking for a certain kind of futon. This sort of thing makes me laugh, so I thought I'd share it. Starts off sounding fairly normal, but then...

Hi Monica,

I have seen that futon on Craigs list, so check there. Alwazs a pain to trz to transport stuff but sometimes price good, as zou know. Bz the waz, the z kez is where y kez should be, so starting now let;s saz that whenever zou see the letter z it is probablz a y. And the y kez is where the z should be. Also, ć is where apostrophe kez should be, so if zou see ć it is probablz an apostrophe. LetĆs see if zou can read this now. Ićm tired of trzing to delete and tzpe over all mz mistakes on this Croation kezboard. Saz hi to Kevin and pet Teebow for me.

Love, Mom

That's it. That's all I get to hear about their 3-week European sojourn so far, the only imagining I'm blessed with: that of clunkity-old Croatian keyboards with letters in all the wrong places. It was enough to elicit a Sunday morning chuckle.

* * *

Now onto the serious stuff! Time to straighten up in your chairs and fold your hands solemnly in your laps, boys and girls. Let's talk about neighborly love!

These past few weeks, or maybe months, or maybe years, I've found myself feeling oddly disconnected to the world. Lots and lots of people in my life, new friends and projects and acquaintences filtering in, yet this increasing feeling of being over-stretched, under-supported, perpetually stressed out. It's hard to explain what it IS exactly, this sort of overfull and unpleasant sensation. It comes from...not sure...being busy and tired almost constantly? Making social plans to the point where there simply isn't any time left to just chill? Making too many personal connections, yet not devoting enough energy to maintain any of them in a quality way?

It's an odd and counter-intuitive thing to feel, especially considering the proliferation of blogs and Facebook and e-mail and what-nots, all of which - I thought - were supposed to make us feel more connected, not less. Right? I mean, isn't that why so many of us, in this day and age, gravitate toward these social tools? In terms of this blog and the millions of others like it out there, isn't finding connection with other humans who "get it" the whole point, whether that "it" is KuKd or infertility or any other particular experience?

So, if that's the case, then why is it that the more time I spend on these things, the more out of my mind I sometimes feel?

I don't have any hardcore proof, which is to say I've not gone to the library to look up "maternal grieving traditions" or anything. Nonetheless, I've got these storybook images flitting through my mind about how women dealt with the death of a child, born or unborn, back before all these electronic social interfaces existed, back when the only way to connect with humans was to physically go over to someone's house. Or write them a letter, I guess. Or run into them at the general store or the bakery.

In my storybook image of history, I picture a whole bunch of women coming together in their pleated skirts and bonnets - whatever Little-House-On-The-Prairie-esque clothing women wore back in the day - and just being this tight-knit wall of support. Older women, younger women, all gathering around the poor girl who lost the child, bringing her fresh baked bread and tea, distracting her, talking to her, all of them sitting around and talking and crying.

I picture the pastor of the local church (a cute, white-clapboard church with a perfect little steeple) collecting a bunch of extra money in the donations box and ordering flowers for her. Maybe sending a gaggle of church ladies over to help do the laundry or sing her some church hymns. I picture all of the neighbors showing up to bring her some homemade...I don't know...corn fritters or apple pie or something. I picture the grocer giving her a free chicken or a box of cookies as a sign of sympathy.

Now, that big, unified wave of community support isn't something I ever got, or - to be honest - consciously even wanted, I don't think, during my darkest KuKd days. It isn't that Kev and I were short on friends and family, short on phone calls and flowers and cards. We got those. I just didn't feel, really at any point, this whole connected sense of the community - the world around me - really knowing what to do with me, what to do with the death of an unborn and unseen baby.

People didn't seem to know intuitively how to come together and form a wall of support, the way I would have expected it - maybe - back in the olden days. Everything felt like a game of connect-the-dots. A friend here, a friend there, a smattering of visits, an awkward bit of discourse, a random casserole appearing on the doorstep. Some friends had the intuition to throw themselves in my direction. Others groped around for words, stumbling and not knowing how to act. I myself felt uncomfortable with visitors, preferring at times to retreat like a hermit crab and watch movies with Kevin.

Fragmented grieving culture: that's what I called it.

* * *

Fast forward to now.

Tonight I had one of those experiences that sticks with you and makes you think. I'm still thinking about it now. Nothing exciting in and of itself, just an ordinary potluck at the house of our neighbors Josh and Jessica, an annual thing designated specifically for the residents of this block and our immediate vicinity. It's the first time we've attended. Loads of homemade food and about fifteen people milling about the foliage-filled backyard among tiki torches and clinking beer bottles. Kind of a mixed crowd - crunchy, long-haired younger types; a couple of lesbians alternately sitting on each others' laps; a handful of old-timers who've grown up on this street.

Now, Josh and Jessica are two of the nicest people you could meet. You know those people who are so damned nice, so open and warm and friendly, that they make you feel like an asshole just for being you and not them? Like, those people who say hello from the beginning and talk to you as though you're old friends, without judgement or suspicious looks, without shyness or awkwardness or selfishness? Josh and Jessica are those people, and have been for a long time. I so often wish I were one of those gems of a human being, that I were really that kind and selflessly, effervescently wonderful.

Being around them, their happy loving aura, was just soothing. But what's more, we got to meet - not just meet, but have lengthy conversation with - even MORE neighbors! Imagine that! Actually having more than just a cursory exchange of "good mornings" with the people who live on our block, more than a mere FB status swap, a one-sentence e-mail! Let's see. We only bought this house...oh...two-and-a-half years ago. One would think we'd have the balls, the social grace, the whatever it takes, to actually go outside and connect with the people who live a mere stones throw from any given direction from our house.

I like to blame my anti-social behavior on the stillbirth. Check out how well it fits: when we bought the house, I was preggers. Big belly, neighbors waving and asking when the baby was due. No time to socialize when you've got a baby on the way! So much pre-baby Googlinating to do!

Then, suddenly no more belly, but no baby in sight. And - just a few weeks later - boom! A puppy! I really didn't feel like going around and explaining what had happened, that no, I'd not just given birth to a dog, and that no, I'd not sold my baby into the child slavery trade in exchange for a gourmet poodle mix. Normally that would be the job of "that friend" or "that neighbor" - the one who knows you well enough to be the purveyor of such information to others on the street. The problem was, I didn't have a "that friend" or "that neighbor" on the block, someone who I could count on to spread the word to the others.

But there's the real truth, of course, which is...who has time to talk to the neighbors when I'm so busy futzing around on the computer? Editing a manuscript that I'm deadly sick of? Talking to my dog? Being busy? Overscheduling myself? Nobody has time to..say...sit on the old couple's porch with them across the way and sip lemon tea. Nope, nope, nope.

So, back to tonight's potluck. There were neigbhors there, old and young, and we talked. FINALLY, we just talked - about what it used to be like on the block, about stories, about ailments, about kids and family, about the rats that like to run along everyone's fences at night around here. We talked about the sink hole that supposedly exists in the middle of our street (who knew!), about what it was like before the freeway was built, about the lake that used to sit where the mall is now. We talked about little stuff and big stuff - us and all these neighbors. The old folks said to us, "so nice to meet you, another nice young couple on the block!"

I was beaming, and felt full of good food, and full of good old-fashioned human connectedness.

And I knew, suddenly, that had these people been my friends back in the midst of my sudden KuKd awfulness, that these old ladies and young'uns alike - Josh and Jessica and everyone else there - would have come together to be like this old-school wall of support, had things been different. Which is, had I been more open to letting them into our twisted lives. Had I known them for longer, and not had my face in the computer all these years. It made me kinda sad, nostaglic for someting, I'm not sure what. Maybe for a bygone era, a time when people came together more naturally and felt more connected. Or mabye we never really did? Maybe I'm just imagining it after watching too many romantic movies? Maybe humans are secretly anti-social creatures, all of us?

* * *

That's all - no big moral of the story here. Just that this potluck made me really happy, and reminded me to go over to sip lemon tea on Mike and Claudia's porch from time to time, even though it's easier to nestle into the futon and gobble up people's Facebook status-bytes. Or, go over to the other neighbors' yard to pet their pygmy goats (which I had no idea existed). In the end, it's these lovely old people - and all those gems of friends and neighbors and family members who I perpetually take for granted - who matter most when the shit hits the fan.

(OH, and by the way. I started writing earlier about that inhaled "hee-yoop" sound, which - yes - IS indeed a sucking sound, as identified correctly by several astute readers. Contrary to all logic, it is NOT intended to sound like an airplane toilet, although I can see why you might think that, given its close proximity to toilet-related musings in one post. And in fact, it kind of does sound like a toilet! It could be any sucking sound, really. I do have a specific thing in mind, however, which I'll divulge later. This neighborly loveliness thought-fest was just clawing to get out!