hilarity ensues

Today was the second day my co-workers and I spent in the Gulf looking for a giant oil slick. You would think that we could find a patch of oil miles long, but the funny thing about the Gulf is that it is constantly moving. The damn oil patches keep moving around and we can't freaking find them! Anyway - to my story:

Imagine if you will a beautiful sunny day on a peaceful, calm ocean. You see a helicopter circling a boat and notice the helicopter is signaling for the boat to go to a particular spot. The boat follows and soon you notice every boat in the area (5 total) are headed to the same spot at top speed. Our boat gets there first to see what the helicopter is pointing at. It was a very dramatic moment as we all prepared ourselves to rescue . . .

Wait for it . . .

A plastic, inflatable alligator.

I swear, as we were headed over to it, the legs on the alligator looked like two people frantically waving for help. We were about 2 miles offshore of the pass that could easily sweep someone on a float out to sea. I have to say it was quite cool to get my hat blown off by a helicopter hovering yards over my head.

The helicopter was actually scouting for us because we couldn't find the damn oil to take samples. I guess they thought there were people out there, too. What a day. At least we got a laugh out of it. Thank god there wasn't anyone out there.

Bra post coming soon, I promise. I haven't been able to wrest the computer away from my husband.

simply missing

I’m doing okay today. I had a good time with my daughter over the weekend. That goes a long way towards healing the hurt of not being pregnant yet.

There were many things that made me cry the last few days. I have a good friend that has an 8 month old boy. I first met him a couple of days after I found out that Aiden was dying. My friend asked me if I wanted to hold him the first time she brought him over (our daughters were friends at daycare) and I couldn’t think of what to say so I said yes. It wasn’t so bad and I’ve been fine holding him since. However, there are several things she does with him that I don’t agree with. She thinks it is spoiling him to rock him to sleep, but he won’t sleep unless he is being held or has a bottle. There are good reasons why everyone says not to prop a bottle up and let a baby sleep with one. She doesn’t agree that it’s a problem and I can’t tell her how to mother her child. I try not to undermine what she does so I have never rocked him to sleep, even though I really want to. Yesterday I was holding him and he accidently hurt himself when I wasn’t paying attention. He screamed bloody murder and I rocked him to try to get him to calm down. He started to fall asleep so I just kept rocking. It made my chest hurt, I miss that so badly. I want to rock MY baby. She came back over and teased me about spoiling him, but she wasn’t upset. It’s so hard to watch someone do something you think is dangerous when you don’t have your own baby to protect.

Later that day I was just feeling down. We had gone to the river and that was very nice but on the way home I couldn’t stop the endless loop of missing Aiden. My husband and I shared a shower and I was already on the verge of tears but when I smelled his soap I just lost it. It was the same soap I used for my daughter when she was a baby. The smell brought back a very vivid memory of washing her when she was so tiny she couldn’t even hold up her head. I was thinking I should have a one month old; I should be using that for him. I wish I hadn’t told Sean to buy that soap. It never occurred to me that the smell would do that.

So, just random missing-baby things today. I’m tired of wallowing in grief. Tomorrow I will post about my fabulous new bra – trust me, it’s a big deal.

I’m done with this week.

Monday: Spend the day on the phone with a new daycare I’m trying to get Kira into. The director had to apply for a variance to accept kids from the waiting list. I have to give a week’s notice at the other daycare so I was hoping it would go through today. It didn’t happen by 5pm. And I’m not pregnant.

Tuesday: I go to PT after having the worst pain in a month for no particular reason, only to find out that I have maxed out my approved visits and have to get another referral to continue. I walk into work 30 minutes late, and already in pain, to be told that everyone else has been pulled off what they are doing to deal with the oil spill and I have to spend the entire day with the co-worker I HATE doing a routine sampling run. She gets us lost repeatedly and by the end of the day I want to puncture my eardrums so I don’t have to listen to her bigoted bitching anymore. I’m so damn tired that I skip my SHARE meeting, which I really needed today. I get to Kira’s daycare and find out that she made a racial comment to my husband that morning. She repeats it to me and says she heard another kid say it. I call the other daycare and BEG them to take her the next day, because she WILL NOT be going back there, ever. They said they could, thank god. Still not pregnant.

Wednesday: I get Kira settled into her new daycare. It’s nerve-wracking for me, she seems to enjoy it. Get to work late again; spend the day not doing anything except getting worried about my MRI that evening. I’m 14 dpo and still negative, although no sign of a period. Freak out all day that maybe I’m pregnant and should cancel, convince myself I’m not pregnant and go ahead. Get through the MRI and the rest of the night okay, although I can’t sleep.

Thursday: My temps dropped but are still above the cover line. I’m 15 dpo and there’s no sign of anything. The tests are still negative. Freak out that I am pregnant and call OB. She says to wait a week. Apparently she doesn’t realize I’ll be in the loony bin by then. Then I get my MRI results – no significant findings. There is some minor disc bulging but nothing to explain the extreme pain I’ve been in for two months. So I may have scrambled an embryo for absolutely fucking nothing. Fantastic.

The only thing keeping me together today is that I know my daughter is safe now, and much happier. I wish I could have moved her months ago. Although now I get to tell the new daycare about our loss so they know not to tell her she’s not a big sister.

My soundtrack today:

Death already came and got me
“I can’t, I can’t stop crying”

Wreck of the day
“Driving away from the wreck of the day. . . desperately close to a coffin of oak, I’d cheat destiny just to be near you . . . if this is giving up, then I’m giving up”

Full of grace
“I feel just like I’m sinking, and I claw for solid ground. I’m pulled down by the undertow. I never thought I could feel so low, oh in darkness I feel like letting go.”

I need wine. And chocolate.

I wrote this yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post it. Today my period finally started, with the usual horrible cramps. More and more oil is headed our way, it's just so depressing.

really short update - in pictures

What the beach should look like


What it looks like now


The result


There are no curse words bad enough.

On the even brighter side - 14 dpo, negative tests, no period. I had my MRI today, results should be soon.

If I am not pregnant . . .

. . . what the hell is my body trying to do to me?

9 DPO

Symptoms:

- migraines (first time in two months, have them constantly when pregnant)

- weird twitches in the uterus that I SWEAR feel like kicks. I know they aren't but they are really messing with my head. They put me right back to the last days with Aiden, knowing he wasn't really kicking.

- Nausea and a distaste for coffee - the coffee I've been drinking religiously for 3 years now. (I know caffeine is a no-no, my MFM said it's fine at 1 cup a day)

- Fatigue. I went to bed a 9:30 last night and I'm still tired

- Wild mood swings and LOTS of weepiness

- Huge, massive, painful zits all over the place

- Stabbing pain in boobs

All of this except the uterus twitching and the coffee aversion I can attribute to stress, the time of the month, changing anti-depressants, whatever. But those two symptoms are odd, especially the coffee. They have left the back door open for that sneaky bitch, hope, to slither in.

I'm trying SO DAMN HARD to not get my hopes up. Especially as I now know that pregnant does NOT equal baby. I don't think it's working. And useless peeing* on sticks is only making me more crazy.

HELP!

*Incidentally - did you know that fresh urine will attract carpenter ants? No? Well neither did I. It wasn't mine, by the way. My daughter has a small potty in her room and this morning it had ant soup in it. Gross.

GAH!!

Lots more crazy over here.

I switched ADs this week (STUPID, STUPID, STUPID) and I'm really feeling it. I had two fights about really stupid shit tonight with Sean and couldn't tolerate Kira for even 10 minutes. How shitty is that? I want a baby so bad and I can't even appreciate what I have. I know I am in a shit storm of grief, depression, and anxiety right now, but still.

I've been trying to comment today and google keeps eating them. Is that just me? I give up. If you haven't heard from me, I'm sorry. I'll try again tomorrow. I can't think of much to say anyway - I don't think anyone wants to hear from Eeyore today anyway.

Sorry - I just can't get out of this well today. I think I will just sleep down here and see what tomorrow brings.

OH - and I had my O day wrong. I am testing way too early. But that means I didn't time sex well. Dammit.

Something to keep me occupied during the tww

This is probably really unhealthy but I am playing a game called, "What is your worst fear?"

At first I said my worst fear was this happening again. A very sick baby and a terrible choice to make. Then I thought it would be worse if there was something wrong but it might not be fatal - to me that is a much worse decision.

But I realized today what my worst fear is - multiples.

I can think of 6 twin pregnancies I know about right off the top of my head. None of them ended well. Not one. In the best one the two boys survived their NICU stay and one twin is developmentally behind. Not tragic, I know, but still. In all of the others one or both twins died.

Twins run in my husband's family. I took clomid. I don't want to know the odds but I am terrified of dropping more than one egg or having one split, or - god forbid - both. I would probably carry a twin pregnancy, although I would be utterly terrified. But there is no way I could do triplets or more. I know my health is not up to that. But the thought of getting a reduction is so awful I can barely comprehend it. I hope this doesn't add to anyone's guilt or anxiety, but I can't fathom having to choose to end the life of a healthy embryo to save another. I can't imagine living with the guilt. I know that worrying about this is useless, I just can't seem to help it. I think about alternatives. What if I did carry 3 or 4? If something horrible happened, especially if I lost them all, I would never forgive myself. If I had a reduction, I would never forgive myself.

Apparently my way of coping with stress is to come up with even more horrible (and probably unrealistic) things to worry about. I'm going to blame it on my friend who used to always say, "It could be worse, it can always be worse."

What about you? What are you afraid of?

*PS - I do realize that clomid usually doesn't result in high-order multiples, I am just ridiculously paranoid.