Two Shorten the Road

In Case You Were Wondering

2011-02-24T01:02:00.007Z

Hello to the handful of people who may have been wondering how little Lexie is doing.

Lexie turned 2 on January 14, and got her first haircut last month. She started daycare in September – we call it “school” – and she loves her little friends there. She is talking up a storm, bossing us around and working hard to make her wants/needs known. She talks in sentences at times and even sings songs. She likes to make up words to common tunes. Example: “Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey,” sung to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle.” In a similar vein, Curious George is a favorite. She also enjoys Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, aka “Ernie-Bert!” Below, Lexie sings “Twinkle Twinkle.”

She is on target or ahead of the game for almost everything.

Almost.

The one place she’s far, far behind is in her eating skills. She eats at the level of about a 10 or 11 month old baby. She still gets her nutrition from stage 2 toddler formula in a bottle, purees and baby yogurt. She has trouble using a sippy for any length of time (she seems to get tired), and she gags on any textures beyond purees. After about 6 months of speech therapy (for eating, not for speech) that went nowhere, I called the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, which houses one of the top feeding disorder clinics in the country. Two months later, in early January, we drove up there for a consult.

It was eye-opening. This is the first time we've encountered a full team of specialists who knew exactly what they were seeing. They totally listened to me and I felt like part of a functioning team. They asked very pointed questions and eventually came to a cohesive diagnosis.

Lexie has hypotonia (also known as low tone – a neurological condition that impedes the coordination of muscles) in her cheeks and secondary sensory issues, which have caused her to fail to learn the regular developmental eating skills that normal kids learn. Fundamentally, her hypotonia has prevented her from learning how to chew and how to manage food in her mouth. In the short term we have a follow-up with an oral-motor specialist and a behavioral therapist at KKI, and they advised us to get Lexie a great OT in our area ASAP.

For the long term, KKI recommended Lexie for their intensive 8-week program (which has a 6-month waiting list). It would require that I take a leave of absence from my job and we would have to live in Baltimore (possibly at the hospital itself, depending on some insurance issues) for that time. As you may recall, dear readers, I spent 8.5 weeks in the hospital prior to Lexie’s birth. I have no desire to do this again unless absolutely necessary. It may well be necessary, but we’re going to work hard in the meantime to make progress at home.

Lexie has an occupational therapist now with extensive feeding experience; the therapist is working on her oral motor skills and is working to desensitize her mouth. She has been very motivated to eat by her daycare classmates. They cheer for her when she bites into a cracker or takes a sip of soup or something new. They all love cookies, so she’s started asking for them, even though she can’t chew and swallow them. She has made a lot of progress, but it’s very, very slow. She is on the waiting list for feeding group therapy – a weekly session with 11 other toddlers who have similar problems eating. And I’m looking into one more therapist, an oral motor specialist, just for good measure.

I’m also looking into a consult at the Kluge feeding clinic in Charlottesville – their intensive feeding program is only 2 weeks or so, which seems worth a shot before going to an 8-week program.

Lexie’s feeding issues also mean we can’t take her out to a restaurant. There’s nothing there she can eat, and she’s pretty likely to have a tantrum when food is around. We are looking forward to the day when we can sit her in a booster next to us and let her nosh on chicken fingers and French fries. We’ll work on the veggies later.

One thing I’d like to note: we waited probably longer than we should have to move beyond the speech therapist. She was our second speech therapist and was better than the first (who we let go after 3 aimless sessions), and did help Lexie get comfortable putting things in her mouth. But from there, the speech therapist couldn’t get any traction. She tried several things and none worked, and Lexie started freaking out as soon as she’d see the therapist. It got to the point where, for about 3 months, the therapy sessions consisted of her sitting and watching us try to feed Lexie while Lexie screamed in her high chair.

Everyone kept telling us that feeding problems take a long time to solve, and I obviously can agree with that, but I wish we had gone to KKI sooner to identify the underlying problem. Now that it’s clear, we can target Lexie’s treatment to learning how to chew, improving her behavior, and desensitizing her to textures.

At Lexie's two year well-child visit, her pediatrician expressed amazement that a 30-week preemie could be doing so well developmentally, and she thought the feeding problems were not so bad, considering some of the issues she could have had to deal with. We agree, and when it does get hard to miss work for therapy appointments or when Lexie has a really bad day for eating, we try to remember how lucky we are that this is the only issue she has.

We are very lucky.

Beach Bunny

2010-06-29T02:12:00.011+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, Lexie saw the ocean for the first time.

She crawled in the sand.

And she went with daddy to the Beaufort Maritime Museum.

More to come soon.

Feeding Delay

2010-05-09T03:29:00.002+01:00

Lexie is almost 16 months old. She has never eaten a Cheerio, puff, or cracker. She won't eat pasta or rice. If anything other than milk or pureed food enters her mouth, she cries hysterically and/or throws up. Sometimes she does that even with purees.

These are common problems for babies who were tube fed, as well as babies who have or have had reflux. We decided to get some professional help, in the form of an assessment from the state's Early Intervention program.

A team of two therapists and a social worker evaluated Lexie during a two-hour appointment. They documented her strengths (she's advanced in communication skills) and they noted their concerns. The first sentence read:

Alexandra has a diagnosis of prematurity, which may affect her development for many years.

I felt both validated and saddened by that sentence. I felt validated because, when I tell people about Lexie's challenges, they often like to say something to the effect of, "yeah, but full-term babies have those problems too." I don't understand the urge to minimize the effects of prematurity. Yes, full-term babies have problems too, but how is that relevant to little Lexie? Maybe it's a misguided attempt to make me feel better about the situation.

At the same time, it was hard to read that statement. I knew it was true, but seeing it in black and white made it seem very official. I'm still hoping that this is the extent of her issues (*hope hope hope*) and that she won't have any learning challenges when she gets to school. I don't like to think about that possibility, but I know we must be vigilant. Whatever happens, we'll get her the help she needs.

The therapists estimated that Lexie is at a 7-month level in the area of "self-help skills: feeding," which qualified her for speech therapy. (It's not for speech -- speech therapists actually work with all manner of oral disorders in babies, including feeding issues.) They also diagnosed low muscle tone, but she is doing the right things on her own to build up her strength, so no therapy will be required for those particular issues.

The assessment was a month ago, and we are still on the waiting list for a therapist. Wish us luck -- I'm really looking forward to seeing Lexie eat a cracker on her own some day.

Messages From Beyond

2010-05-05T03:21:00.002+01:00

There's a song in my mom's family that seems to play during times of loss or other momentous occasions.

It's called "When Will I See You Again" by The Three Degrees. It came out in 1974, and it isn't a song you hear often. And yet, in my family, it always seems to materialize on the radio as the soundtrack to major events. A message from above, if you will.

My mom first noticed it right after her mom died in 1978. At the time, the song was fairly current. Nothing unusual there. It was just a song that reminded her of her mom.

Eight years later, we were driving home from my grandfather's funeral (my mom's dad), and I suddenly noticed my mom was sobbing. And then I noticed the song playing on the radio.

When will I see you again?
When will we share precious moments?
Will I have to wait forever?
Will I have to suffer and cry the whole night through?

Through the years we noticed it playing at important moments: the day of my uncle's death ... on my grandma's birthday ... the first time in 15 years that my mom and her sisters had all been together, right as my mom was leaving ... there are more, but you get the idea.

My rational self knows this is probably a case of finding a pattern because we're looking for it. But the timing is always so unlikely. And I, for one, rarely listen to channels that play that kind of music.

On the day Steve left for Mississippi, his dad was on life support in the ICU but we didn't know what had happened, and we didn't know the prognosis.

When I turned on my car radio as I left work the next day, "When Will I See You Again" piped through my speakers. My heart sank.

I knew Steve's dad was gone.

Life Gets in the Way

2010-05-03T02:39:00.008+01:00

I missed an entire month.

I have a good excuse. For the first half of the month, Steve was in intensive training that kept him working very long hours, so blogging time for me was nonexistent.

And then, Steve's dad died.

Steve's dad had been descending further and further into dementia over the past few years; he had early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He had trouble speaking properly and was very confused the vast majority of the time. He'd also been wandering, and had started walking around on the highway and refusing to come home. The situation had become unsafe. Steve's mom had checked Steve's dad into the hospital in the hopes of medicating him to calm him down to the point that he could go into a nursing home.

He'd always said he didn't want to go into a nursing home. Most people who knew him actually thought he'd like it there once he got used to it, because he was very extroverted. In a nursing home with a good dementia program, he'd have people to talk to all day long -- fellow patients who wouldn't remember that he'd already told them something or who wouldn't notice if he wasn't making any sense. But he seemed to have an idea in his head about what it would be like, and it brought him to a panic whenever he thought of it. So Steve's mom kept him at home, and every day he wandered.

For a couple of years, he had been walking miles and miles daily through the dirt roads outside his small Mississippi town. We had worried about him constantly. At his viewing the night before the funeral, several distant neighbors showed up unexpectedly. They said Steve's dad had been visiting them regularly on his long walks. One family said he used to come and sit on their porch. The first time, they called the police. But he came back again, and the neighbors realized he was just looking for company. They said they often sat with him and talked. Turns out, a lot of people were watching out for him.

His demise was lengthy, but even still, we had expected it to take years longer. He was only 65 and was in very good physical shape, no doubt thanks in part to all the walking. The end, when it came in the form of a pulmonary embolism, was sudden and unexpected. I don't think it's callous to say that many family members were relieved at how he died. He never forgot his family. He never became incapacitated. He was able to meet little Lexie and he knew he was her grandfather (referring to himself as "paw paw").

Lexie stayed in Virginia with my parents while I made a whirlwind three-day trip to Mississippi. Steve comes home tomorrow after what seems like a long time away.

RIP, paw paw.

Spring, Finally

2010-03-31T02:56:00.005+01:00

In an attempt to try a new route from a client meeting to my office, I inadvertently ended up in downtown DC. As locals know, the traffic during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival is no picnic, and this little detour cost me an extra 35 minutes. Sitting in the traffic, I noticed small white flakes flying past my car window. My brain automatically associated them with snow -- we had so much this year, at times it almost seemed spring would never come. But of course, they weren't snowflakes.
They were cherry blossoms.

More Gratuitous Lexie Photos

2010-03-20T02:17:00.007Z

If Lexie had been born on her due date, today would have been her first birthday. This makes her one year old, adjusted, and her progress is measured against that of a true one-year-old child. She's on target in most areas, but eating is still a big problem. She is stuck on purees and oatmeal. She won't put food in her mouth and throws up or cries like crazy every time we try to put something solid like a cheer.io in her mouth. She also won't use a sippy cup. We had her evaluated last week, and she has been approved for early intervention services from the state. I'm relieved that we'll be getting her the help she needs, but I do wish she didn't need it.

In the meantime, she has learned to root for the New Orleans Saints.

And she has learned to root for the Syracuse Orange.

She's also been playing her great grandma's piano.

I think she's doing pretty well, all things considered.

Another Anniversary

2010-02-28T03:55:00.004Z

A year ago we brought Lexie home from the NICU. She spent 6 weeks there healing and growing. When she was there, we stayed informed of her status and the minor procedures she underwent, but I didn't get too deep into the details. I just mentally couldn't go there. That's why I don't know for sure about what happened to her in the hours after her birth, and I didn't know for sure what the possibilities were for complications in the weeks after her birth, and I didn't know specific details about how procedures like feeding tube insertions were performed.

A couple of months ago the (in)famous Duggars welcomed a preemie into their gigantic family. I never thought I'd watch that show, but since the arrival of 19th child Josie at 25 weeks gestation, I've been tuning in. I'm not so interested in the family's activities, but I've been watching the NICU footage carefully. I've now seen a feeding tube insertion on TV, and I know how far down it goes (far -- to the small intestine). I've seen this little TV preemie encounter complications that we avoided, but now I understand how they occur, and I realize how lucky we were that nothing serious befell Lexie during her time in the hospital. I now understand that when the nurses said "we're giving her .4 ml an hour of milk, and we'll see how she does," they were watching for a bowel perforation or necrotizing enterocolitis, in which the intestine begins to die. We didn't dig any deeper and just happily accepted it each day when Lexie did well and her feeds were increased.

I'm glad I didn't know that much about it at the time.

My Funny Valentine

2010-02-12T02:28:00.009Z

I don't talk too much about Steve in this space, but in honor of the upcoming cliche'd holiday I thought I'd talk about one of his best qualities, the one that drew me to him and keeps us close even while we seem to spend all our time working and taking care of Lexie. He has lots of great qualities -- he's intelligent, curious, and a great dad, to name just a few. But the quality I want to talk about here is his understated sense of humor.

When we first met, Steve was the ultimate gentleman, and he kept his sense of humor under wraps. It was around our third date that he really made me laugh for the first time, telling a story about how he'd gotten to hold a friendly three-toed sloth in South America, ending with the opinion that it would be the best pet ever. When I asked why, he said, "because it hardly ever goes to the bathroom."

He also re-enacted a later encounter with an UNfriendly wild sloth, which he and his officer friends were trying to poke at while they smoked cigarettes near a pier off the Panama Canal. That sloth tried to claw at their faces. But being a sloth, the attack went in super-slow motion -- snarling face, nasty-looking outreached claw and all.

Steve has a talent for defusing my irritation. A couple of summers ago, he took to leaving his flip flops in the middle of the living room. I finally complained that they were making me trip. He looked at me solemnly: "Me too." I laughed. He started putting them under the couch instead.

When I came home from the hospital last year, the house was pretty dirty. After a couple of weeks (during which I was recovering from an emergency C-section), I pointed out that there were dust bunnies the size of tennis balls under the dresser.

"You think that's bad?" he asked. "You should see under the bed."

Happy V-day, Steve. I couldn't imagine it with anyone else.

One Year Old, a Preemie Birthday

2010-01-23T03:11:00.010Z

Last week, we celebrated Lexie's first birthday. She didn't really pick up on it, of course, but it was another milestone we weren't sure we'd ever achieve when I went into preterm labor at 22 weeks.

We kept it all low key. I didn't want to make a big deal out of the day, because it's not the same for preemie parents. I don't think back to the day of her birth as a day of joy and expectation. I didn't have the Hallmark "honey, it's time" moment where the very-pregnant mom-to-be picks up her already-packed overnight bag and waddles out to the car for a quick ride to the hospital and a normal birth experience. I don't have memories of smiles in the delivery room and I didn't have my baby placed on my chest right after she was born. I didn't bring my baby home a few days later to a perfectly finished nursery.

Instead, I waited in terror to hear whether my baby cried, waited prostrate and desperate for a report from the doctor on how she looked, knowing she wasn't ready to make it on her own after only 30 weeks inside me. I was so relieved when I heard Lexie cry after she was pried out of me (she was stuck behind my pelvic bone due to my unicornuate uterus). She was blue -- a giant bruise from the unusually violent c-section delivery covered three-quarters of her head and half her torso, which is why I won't be posting those pictures here. A few moments after she was born, I heard a nurse say "CLEAR!" and I panicked as I lay there paralyzed by spinal anesthesia. The first thing I thought of was the heart paddles. But everything was fine; it turned out that they were referring to her mouth and nose being clear of fluid.

She did require extensive medical intervention. Her Apgars were lousy -- she started at 4 and moved up to 6. I'd had two steroid shots to boost her lung function at 23.5 weeks, but the effect had worn off by 30 weeks. I got another shot that morning, but it wouldn't have taken full effect that quickly. I believe she had surfactant pumped directly into her lungs once she was put on oxygen. I wasn't allowed to hold her for days. She was so tiny and jaundiced and limp lying there in her isolette. She cried like crazy under the jaundice lights for more than a week. All in all, it's not an experience that lends itself to celebration.

Below, tiny Lexie a year ago today, at age one week.

For her birthday last week, my mom brought Lexie a balloon and we put a cupcake in front of her. She isn't able to eat anything solid -- anything with chunks makes her throw up -- but she messed around with the cupcake. She played with a couple of new toys, and we called it a day.

I'm so thankful to have her here and I'm thankful she is doing well. Next year maybe we'll throw a big party. But for now that's not something I can handle. Not just yet.

Why I'm Not Voting Tomorrow

2010-01-11T21:05:00.006Z

A few weeks back, I noticed we'd been getting a lot of phone calls -- maybe 5 at that point -- from the Dave Marsden for Senate (VA) campaign. (There's a special election to fill the seat vacated by the guy who won the Attorney General spot.) Some calls featured actual people, some were recorded messages, and some were fake polls that ended with a veiled question that essentially meant "Don't you think it would be a great idea to vote for Dave Marsden?" It was starting to get annoying, so the next call we got, I told the woman that if I got one more call from the Marsden campaign or even ABOUT the Marsden campaign, I was not going to vote that day.

This is a big deal for me. My grandfather was a state representative in Massachusetts. I take my civic duty very seriously, and vote in every primary. I sometimes even get a little misty on my way out of the polls, thinking about how great democracy is. And what do I get in reward for this? Apparently I get my name on the list of "likely Democratic voters," and I get harassed. (I don't *always* vote Dem, but I skew in that direction.)

It was only a few more days before we got another call. Steve answered this one and told the woman about my threat. And I yelled from the background that now I'm not voting. The woman then tried to find out from Steve if I was not voting at all, or voting for the other guy. (Does it matter that much?) Steve said he didn't know and got off the phone.

Over the next couple of days, we got at least three more calls (we're up to 10 at this point in the story -- AT LEAST). Each call hardened my resolve to sit out the election. One call woke Lexie up. Steve's profane response to that person should probably not be repeated here. Then Lexie's nanny told us she had to keep the phone next to her all day because of the political calls for me -- when a call came during one of Lexie's naps, the nanny needed to answer the phone as soon as it rang so Lexie wouldn't wake up.

I felt as if I was under siege. I started to consider changing our home phone to an unlisted number. We have it only for emergencies; we mostly use our cell phones. A couple of Steve's family members use the number, but we could easily fill them in about a new one. It occurred to me that it's ridiculous to be considering changing my phone number because of political calls. Has it really come to this?

Then, yesterday, I had an opportunity to go straight to the horse's mouth. Dave Marsden himself came knocking on my door asking me to vote for him on Tuesday. I couldn't believe my luck.

I informed him that I was not voting this time, because we received SO MANY calls that I felt harassed. I told him it was during dinner, during my family time, and he had alienated me. I mentioned that I always vote, but that I'd be sitting this one out. He looked taken aback and then started a spiel about it being an important election for control of the Virginia State Senate, threatened all sorts of scary right-wing things, and blah blah blah. I just looked at him, thanked him for stopping by, and said, "maybe next time your people won't call me QUITE so much."

After he left, I felt kind of righteous, but I also started thinking that maybe an in-person visit from the candidate trumps excessive telephone harassment. Maybe I would vote for him after all, because the other guy is a far-right-winger who used his one prior elected office (school board) to make a public speech in favor of abstinence-only education that featured a personal story about the trauma he endured in losing his virginity before he got married. Seriously. Maybe I could vote for Marsden after all.

And then. Then the phone rang. It couldn't be.

It was.

Just a friendly recorded call from Mark Warner supporting Marsden for Senate.

FAIL.

Guardian Angel

2010-01-07T01:00:00.003Z

I want to tell you about Lexie's Guardian Angel. It's a cliche, I know. But hear me out.

October 21, 2007, would have been the due date for pregnancy #1, our first loss. That pregnancy only lasted a couple of weeks, but we didn't know to be scared/wary/worried. We knew only that you shouldn't tell people about a pregnancy until 12 weeks or so, once you were past the risk period. (Now, the thought of this almost makes me laugh.) Nobody knew about it except for me and Steve and a couple of close friends. I spontaneously miscarried, and the doctor termed it a chemical pregnancy. When my brother called us a week after my miscarriage to announce that his wife was pregnant, he didn't know about our loss. To this day, he doesn't know. I didn't know what to say. We hadn't announced the pregnancy, and somehow it didn't seem appropriate to say, "Hey, congratulations! We were expecting too, but then I started bleeding like crazy! Our baby would have been born two weeks before yours! Isn't that a funny coincidence? Ha ha!"

January 5th, 2008, would have been the due date for pregnancy #2, our second loss. With this one, we saw a heartbeat at 7 weeks, and the doctor smiled and said "it looks viable." But the egg had implanted way too low, and although that doesn't *always* mean things will go badly, it did for us. At the next appointment there was no heartbeat. I waited to miscarry on my own, but nothing happened. A classic "missed abortion." I had a D&C a couple of long weeks later.

I still think about the babies that weren't, especially around their due dates. My doctor said we'd just had bad luck. At the time, we didn't know about my uterine anomaly. I believed that our first miscarriage was probably just a bad egg, but the circumstances surrounding our second miscarriage were not normal, and we wanted answers. We fired that doctor and went to a specialist. After a barrage of testing, the specialist diagnosed a unicornuate uterus. He noted that most women with this condition have normal pregnancies, but a higher percentage than normal experience preterm labor.

I did my own research and became highly educated on the subject. It seemed to me that implantation in a good spot was key to making it through the first trimester; there is some evidence that the shape of a unicornuate uterus creates far fewer healthy places for implantation in the uterine wall. We'd have no control over where an egg implanted. I didn't know how many more pregnancies it would take, but we would keep trying. More importantly, though, we now knew to be hypervigilant for complications when we finally made it past the first trimester. That's where the new information would make a difference.

If we hadn't had the second miscarriage and started investigating, my pregnancy with Lexie could have had a terrible ending. I wouldn't have already signed on with a perinatology (high-risk pregnancy) practice for all my OB care. We wouldn't have known to call immediately when I started having symptoms of preterm labor. A regular OB probably would have told me to lie down and take it easy for the weekend. Instead, my perinatologist had me report immediately to the hospital, where I stayed for 9 weeks. I was 22 weeks pregnant at the time. Without prior knowledge of my condition, we would likely have lost Lexie in devastating fashion.

We couldn't save the baby who would have been due in January 2008, the baby who had no chance because of my unicornuate uterus.

But by helping to lead us to the answers we needed, that baby saved Lexie.

Snow Baby

2009-12-22T02:48:00.000Z

Earlier this week we got some serious snow. It was notable even by the standards of my former home in Upstate New York. For my current home in Virginia, it was just short of apocalyptic.

We had about 20 inches when all was said and done.

We took Lexie out in the snow so she could really experience her first blizzard. At first, she liked it.

Then, not so much.

Maybe next year.

Too Much Navel Gazing

2009-12-21T02:34:00.003Z

I've been thinking lately that my retrospectives must be pretty boring. I mean, they're even getting boring to me. This whole month everything has reminded me of being in the hospital last year. Even the Today Show's holiday programming reminds me of being in the hospital (and watching the show every day for four long hours). The memories permeate everything, to the extent that I don't even feel much like writing about them. So I've had radio silence here for more than a month.

The New York Times recently published an article about NICU parents with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When I read it, I thought it probably applied more to people whose children were at death's door repeatedly. I hate thinking about Lexie's time in the NICU, but after the first two weeks she was pretty much a feeder-grower (although not the best feeder), and there wasn't too much drama. But a while back I visited the beautifully written blog "A Fifth Season," by a mom who lost her baby daughter after 11 weeks in the NICU. On her daughter's second birthday, the mom posted a video tribute with clips and pictures from the NICU. I was watching the video and feeling sad for this mom, when suddenly the unmistakeable sound of a NICU desat alarm blasted loudly over the soundtrack. I felt a sudden wave of panic, just as I had so many times when Lexie desatted as I fed her in the NICU. And I surprised myself with a series of sudden, gasping sobs.

I have no idea where my reaction came from. I suppose any PTSD will pass, with time. I have no business being traumatized when so many people don't get the happy ending.

Hospitalization: One Year Later

2009-11-16T09:07:00.003Z

On this day last year I went into the hospital with preterm labor. I spent a terrifying Thanksgiving in the hospital, and a less-terrifying (but fairly depressing) Christmas there as time went on.

60 days after I checked in, Lexie was born.

Look how far we've come.

Goodbye Wendy

2009-11-12T09:29:00.008Z

The problem with dog stories is that they all end the same way. We knew this when we adopted Wendy. But we thought we would have more time.

Wendy was billed as a 5-year-old beagle. If we'd really looked, we would have noticed her bad teeth, the touch of gray on her muzzle, her slightly creaky back legs from the arthritis that would only get worse. Her actual age at the time was probably somewhere between 7 and 10 years old. As the story went, a shelter in rural Virginia had found her wandering on the side of a road, starving. People have beagle packs down there, and when the beagles get too old or lose their ability to hunt, they're often turned out from the pack. It was a kill shelter -- her number was almost up when the rescue org came through looking for adoption candidates. She went to live with her foster family Robb and Jerry (and foster beagle brothers Barney and Andy). Wendy had been there for about a month when we met her and decided to make her part of our family. Her foster dads had cleaned and fixed her up as well as possible in that short time, and had worked to fatten her up. But she still had a long way to go.

My brother called Wendy a "fixer-upper." She immediately needed to have her teeth cleaned, and a couple of teeth needed to be removed. Her front teeth were worn down almost to nothing in some places, which her vet said was a sign that she'd been in a wire kennel for many years, and had chewed constantly on the cage because she was bored. She had a bad ear infection, and some nasty stomach problems. The stomach problems didn't stop her from begging for treats, though. Her favorites included, but were not limited to, chicken, steak, hamburger, french fries, cheese, watermelon, pork, bacon, eggs, potato chips, crunchy bread, tuna fish, mashed potato, turkey... the list goes on and on. She was ALWAYS optimistic about the potential for treats.

Wendy was cool with Steve, but she was really my dog. She followed me around all the time. When I went to bed, she went to bed (her little dog bed was at the foot of our person-bed). She always came to sit by me and came to me first for help. She was more likely to listen to me than anyone else, although as a beagle, she was never the best listener. She was not brave. She never barked when anyone came to the door, and was more likely to hide behind us. She fled in terror from tossed tennis balls. She could not do tricks. She never picked up the Washington Post from the sidewalk. The only command we were able to teach her was "sit," and she'd do it only if we were holding a treat at the time.

We taught her her name by saying "Wendy" while crinkling a potato-chip bag.

We went for long walks around the neighborhood. We quickly learned that if Wendy pulled on the leash with all her might, no good could come of letting her go in that direction. Without fail, something heinous and rotten -- but in her world, deliciously stinky -- was at the end of that trail. She enjoyed feinting at squirrels and watching them run away. She rarely bothered to actually chase them. Too much trouble.

She learned that crowds meant more opportunities for treats. After my brother's wedding, we invited family members over for drinks and snacks. Wendy became increasingly excited as the guests arrived. Steve took her out for her walk as the last of the guests were showing up, including my dad, who always spoiled her with treats. Wendy moved very, very slowly as she and Steve walked away from the house. She did her business, turned around, looked at Steve, and took off at full speed toward home. Steve said our creaky little beagle, for once, actually outran him. Inside the house, I heard a commotion and a clatter of toenails and turned to see Wendy skidding to a stop in front of my dad, who then slipped her one of many tasty morsels that evening. I saw other family members do the same. Her stomach swelled to shocking proportions. It was probably one of Wendy's best days ever.

Wendy was a known kleptomaniac, having once stolen a pig ear from the dog groomer's array of treats at the register. I took her back in and we paid for the item, but I don't think Wendy learned any lessons.

We took Wendy on vacation with us one summer, to a cabin on the north fork of the Shenandoah River. She probably thought she was at bootcamp. We walked with her down to the river, maybe 3/4 of a mile. Exhausted from the walk in the sun, she sat panting and refusing to drink, balking when I brought her to the river shore, terrified of the running water. She and I sat under a tree while Steve took an ill-advised dip. (We didn't know until a couple of days later that the river is badly polluted.) We headed back to the cabin, and Wendy sprawled on the floor, panting like crazy. It wasn't until we fired up the grill that night that she got back on her feet.

Last April, Wendy became gravely ill. A tumor on her spleen was bleeding, and if we didn't remove it she'd die within hours. I handed over my Visa, and $2500 later we had a stapled-up dog with a new lease on life. (During the operation, the vet also looked in Wendy's stomach and found -- and removed -- a bunch of metal wire and two socks.) During her recovery at home, we tried to "crate" her in the kitchen with an attractive cherry wood gate. I came home from work to find the gate in splinters. Wendy hated being locked up and had chewed her way through it. We decided to give her the run of the house as usual, and everything was fine. Around the same time, we discovered Wendy had Cushing's Disease. Because the standard treatment could result in increased fearfulness (and some dogs had died of fright after being treated), we elected not to follow an aggressive regimen that kills off part of the pituitary gland. We treated her holistically with melatonin and flaxseed oil. The vet warned us that Cushing's would eventually kill her, but nobody could say how long it would be.

Wendy healed remarkably well from her spleen-removal surgery, and we had a quiet six months or so. When I became pregnant with Lexie, she followed me around even more.

When I went into the hospital last November with preterm labor, I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd deserted Wendy. Did she think I'd abandoned her? I'd wished I could tell her that I was coming back, that I hadn't wanted to leave for so long. I read "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" and cried in the parts where the elderly dog searches for her master. Even though Wendy had been doing well, I worried that she would die before I came home. I made Steve promise that he would stay with her if he had to put her down. When I came home after 9 weeks in the hospital, I expected a joyful reunion. Instead, Wendy regarded me with a sniff and a tail wag, the dog equivalent of "oh, there you are."

I have often heard stories about dogs who wouldn't leave their owners' sides when their owners were sick. This was not Wendy. A true pack dog, Wendy avoided me like the plague when I was unwell. Better to stay with the healthier members of the pack. So she stayed away for the first week or so that I was home, bandaged and weak. We slowly rebuilt our relationship and had a good nine more months together. As Lexie grew, she started noticing Wendy and laughing, sometimes reaching out to touch Wendy's fur. Wendy got used to Lexie, and even allowed Lexie to pet her (gently).

But Wendy's arthritis continued to worsen, and the Cushing's caused her organs to begin to fail. She might have had several more months if that was the only issue, but her back legs gave out. She would walk a few steps and fall down, and her little body would shake, wracked with spasms. She could still rally for french fries or steak, but she lost interest in her dog food. It was becoming clearer and clearer that her time had come. The day she couldn't stand up for some bacon, I knew she'd reached the end.

Wendy, keen-nosed hunter of fast-food bags, connoisseur of french fries and belly rubs, floor-cleaner extraordinaire, ate a bacon cheeseburger and fries last night before we took her to the vet's office and said goodbye. I stayed with her until the end, which was peaceful.

We will never forget her.

This Time Last Year...

2009-10-31T02:33:00.002Z

This time last year, I was into my second trimester and thinking maybe pregnancy wasn't so bad. I'd spent a weekend at Cape May with some college friends and had had a great time. My biweekly OB appointments were going well -- no signs of the preterm labor to come. Our 20-week scan had showed that we were having a girl, and that all was normal. I was having a busy time at work, but it was set to calm down in a couple of weeks. I enjoyed singing really loudly in my car during my commute and I imagined my little girl was enjoying the tunes.

Two weeks later, I was headed to the hospital with contractions and a short cervix, wide-eyed and terrified, where I would stay until January. I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day in the hospital. I didn't leave my hospital room for weeks at a time, and left my bed only to use the bathroom. It was a dark, scary time, and normally I don't like to think about it.

But the time of year is making it impossible to push out of my mind.

Temporary Single Parenthood

2009-10-29T01:06:00.008Z

I am pretty sure I haven't talked about this yet: Steve has been out of town for four weeks now, and I am tired.

My mom was here for almost two weeks, which was helpful, because I was actually able to work a full 8-hour day instead of chipping away at my annual leave by 30-45 minutes each day. (Lexie's nanny works 9 hours. I live 45 minutes from work. That means if I leave as soon as the nanny arrives, which rarely happens, I've got a max of 7.5 hours under my belt for each day.)

Time in the evenings is short. Lexie goes to bed around 7:30pm or 8pm, but I still give her a "sleep feed" around 9:30pm, and I have to hold her up for a half hour after she finishes eating due to her stomach problems. I've found that there is a very tight calculus to what one can accomplish in those evenings when caring for an infant on one's own. Here's how I've got the options figured out:

Group A (Choose one)

6 hours of sleep
4 hours of sleep and two additional items from Group B
Teething baby -- 3 hours of sleep and subtract one item from Group B

Group B (Choose two)

Make a dinner with more than two ingredients
Eat dinner with utensils while sitting at the table
Do one hour of billable work
Shower
Clean up house
Pay bills
Talk to Steve on the phone
Write blog post
Read newspaper/catalogs/books for fun
Fold laundry and put it away

Aaaand it's almost 9:30, so I'm out -- off to get the little miss for her last bottle of the night.

Commuter Tales

2009-10-27T21:00:00.004Z

Back before the days of Lexie, I sometimes blogged about personalized license plates I'd see on my commute. Now that I'm pretty much back in the saddle, I've got the mental bandwidth to notice license plates again. I took note of two recent ones:

I saw the "P SOLACE" license plate (possibly a urologist?) again last week. That guy must have the same commute that I have.

And then, yesterday, I saw a license plate that completely cracked me up. It made me curious about the car's owner and it made me want to be his/her friend. Ready for it? It was this: KGB SPY

Lexie and Her Doggie

2009-10-23T17:31:00.001+01:00

I haven't written much here about our beagle, Wendy. We've had her since a fateful Beagle Adoption Day in 2005. She's a sweet pup, but she's pretty old (probably about 13) and the vet recently gave her a maximum of about 6 months due to a variety of illnesses and complications she's having. I think that's probably fairly optimistic, and based on some recent collapsing spells she's been having, it may be a lot sooner. We're trying to make her as comfortable as possible for now.

Wendy hasn't been all that interested in Lexie except when babyfood is involved. She has allowed Lexie to pet her when Lexie has been gentle, but as soon as the fur gets grabbed, Wendy hobbles away to her dog bed. But Lexie LOVES her doggie. She finds Wendy to be absolutely hilarious. And Wendy stands there wondering what everyone is laughing at.

Spider Woman (or, Evidence That I May Have Gone Off the Deep End)

2009-09-27T23:18:00.007+01:00

We had a terrible mosquito problem this year -- they were eating all of us alive. So we purposely left up several spider webs that appeared on our small front porch. Spiders are good luck, anyway. We rarely saw the actual spiders, but we saw plenty of evidence of their effectiveness in the form of trapped bloodsuckers.

Last week, this appeared.

It's a spider egg sac. My first instinct was to remove it -- to toss those suckers as far away from the house as possible. Then I looked more closely, and saw the spider.

She was never openly visible in her web before the egg sacs appeared. Now she was perched just below her sacs, guarding them. I decided to watch for a few days.

The next night I saw her spinning one more little bubble below the five pictured. The night after that, she started encasing all six bubbles in a thicker cocoon. Every time I passed the web, she sat vigil under her eggs.

I started thinking about Charlotte's Web -- in the book, Charlotte died after the eggs hatched. I did some research -- for some, but not all, spiders, egg-laying is their last major act.

And this is when Crazy came to town. I started relating to the spider. She'll do anything to keep her eggs safe, I thought. She won't leave them, even though this places her out in the open where creatures like me come stare at her. This could be her last shot.

There is no way I will be the one to kill her babies.

This may mean that we'll soon be overrun by tiny spiders. If they keep to themselves, we'll all be fine. If they start messing with my baby, that's another story.

Never a Sure Thing

2009-09-11T02:28:00.013+01:00

I went through a long period in my 20s when there was literally zero family/personal tragedy. The worst things that happened to me from around age 21-27 involved relationship breakups. The most stress I experienced was typically related to apartment moves. Nobody in my extended family died. Nobody got sick, had major surgery, lost a limb, lost a house, lost a baby, got divorced... nothing. Things were very quiet in the "major life change" department. I'd been at my job for more than 5 years. I took the calm for granted.

As I left my office building on September 10, 2001, I walked across the street and past the World Trade Center for what would be the last time, although I didn't know it. As usual, I recognized a lot of the same people walking near me. I was on the same schedule with these strangers and saw many of them daily. "My life is like Groundhog Day," I thought. "Every day is the same. Something needs to change."

I really did think that. Of course, you know where this is going.

Change came in relentless waves after 9/11. I never returned to that office. After six months of professional limbo working in New Jersey with my colleagues at an alternate "temporary" site, I resigned and headed to DC for grad school and a job at a university that offered an uncompetitive salary and free graduate classes.

The drama and change continued. My aunt and then my grandma died. Steve and I got married. My dad had hip surgery. I finished grad school and found a new job. My mom had surgery on her vertebra. Steve went to Iraq for six months. My uncle died. Steve and I started trying to have a baby and had two losses right off the bat. Steve's dad began descending deeper into chronic illness. In the last year, two of my real-life friends lost their babies, born too early to survive. I finally made it to the second trimester and ended up in the hospital with preterm labor for 9 weeks. Lexie was born 10 weeks early.

I've wanted to ask someone -- why does this shit happen? Why do babies die? Why did nearly 3,000 people die on the whim of some sick asshole on the other side of the world? But there is no "why." You can get into specific causes, but the big-picture "why" -- it doesn't exist.

What this has taught me is that nothing is a sure thing. I didn't truly understand this before having some real adversity. I think it's good in some ways that I know this now, instead of sailing through life thinking it's a big deal if someone dents my car in the garage or the movers break my mirror. This knowledge can also be bad, though -- as in my earlier aversion to buying Lexie's wardrobe too far ahead. It's irrational. Chances are, now, she'll be alright. But who knows -- the world could end tomorrow. As long as we go together, I think I'd be ok with that.

I really don't have any words of wisdom about this day. I'll be remembering the friends I spent that Tuesday morning with, remembering the ashes and singed papers floating down to the ground in Brooklyn, remembering the acrid smell, remembering how the gorgeous September weather seemed all wrong for that day, remembering the 13 worried messages I had on my machine when I got home after everything happened. Remembering waking up the next morning to a moment of peace before the memories flooded back like a punch in the stomach. Remembering the fat plume of smoke that rose from lower Manhattan for weeks afterward.

Remembering how we thought things would never be the same.

Gratuitous Giggling Video

2009-08-28T23:11:00.001+01:00

We had Lexie baptized last week, and with the resulting deluge of family, we have been very busy. But we did have time to take this video of Lexie giggling in her pajamas.

Every time I watch this video, I can't believe how lucky we are.

Uncertainty

2009-08-14T02:08:00.011+01:00

At a department store recently, I thought about buying some sale clothes for next summer for Lexie. I found myself hesitating, in the same way I hesitated when I didn't want to buy maternity clothes too early, and when I didn't want to buy baby clothes until she actually arrived.

And I realized: I still am not 100% certain that she's here to stay. She's been in fairly good health, and gaining weight in spite of GI problems. There's no reason to think she's not going to make it at this point. But I still fear SIDS, and now swine flu lurks just over the horizon. I'm sure I'm not alone in my concern for my child, even among parents of full-term babies, but I do think preemie parents have stared a lot of serious, life-threatening hazards in the face, and it heightens our awareness of all that could happen.

I'm not sure when I'll feel secure that Lexie's going to be okay.

The first time I was pregnant, I purchased a onesie for the baby that never was. It was a silly little thing I'd seen years earlier and I was excited to buy it for our baby. After that first miscarriage, I tossed the onesie in the back of a closet, where it stayed for more than two years. Every once in a while I'd come across it, but I'd return it to the depths of the closet and try not to think about it. I hated having that reminder of how certain and happy we had been, and how little we knew about how long the journey to parenthood would be.

A few weeks ago I finally broke out that onesie and tried it on little Lexie. It was already kind of small, but I did get one picture.

She had just the right Jennifer Grey look here, too.

A Study in Friday Night Economics

2009-07-25T02:22:00.007+01:00

Just Married:
Out to a leisurely dinner for delicious sushi and cocktails! $80-$100

Married With Dog, So We Have to Get Home:
Takeout sushi. $55

Expecting a Baby:
Takeout from local grill. $35

Baby Is Home, Mom's Still on Paid Maternity Leave:
Organic whole wheat Greek takeout pizza. $25

Mom's Leave Becomes Unpaid:
Five dollar footlongs: $10.50 incl tax

I get my first paycheck next Friday. Maybe we'll upgrade back to the pizza.

A Year's Journey

2009-07-13T01:38:00.000+01:00

Exactly one year ago, in a North Carolina beach cottage, we found out Lexie was coming. It was our third positive home pregnancy test, so we greeted the news with neither excitement (as we did the first time) nor with cautious optimism (as we did the second time). By this time, we knew about my unicornuate uterus and understood the possible complications. So we greeted the news of our third pregnancy with equal parts hope and fear.

The next morning we were scheduled to drive back to Virginia. Before we left, I sat on the steps to the beach for a long time trying to set my head straight. Looking at the ocean always helps give me perspective, reminding me of my tiny place in this big world. At the time, I'd wished I could know what lay ahead.

It's probably better that I didn't know what we'd contend with through the pregnancy. At least in the early days, I had only my usual worry of miscarriage, and a few weeks of my second trimester were practically a cakewalk. Then it all came crashing down with 9 weeks of preterm labor in the hospital and a baby born 10 weeks too early.

But if I could send a message back to myself a year ago, maybe I'd just tell her this: It's going to be a bad, bumpy ride, and you're going to be more terrified than you've ever been. It will be the hardest thing you've done in your life.

But in the end, it will be worth it.

Back to (Paid) Work

2009-07-08T20:05:00.003+01:00

On Monday I head back to work. I like my job, and I am not exactly dreading my return. I know things will be different, because I'll be highly motivated to get my work done and get the heck home -- not as much socializing with coworkers, and I might be calling in to (versus attending in person) those late-afternoon meetings that can stretch into the dinner hour. I do want to go back to work. But I wish I could have more time with Lexie, too. And my full salary. A girl can dream...

We have hired a great professional nanny for Lexie while we're at work. Because of Lexie's prematurity and resulting weak immune system, she can't go to daycare like a regular kid. I've spent much of today trying to iron out our nanny tax situation. Suffice it to say I now feel more sympathetic to those who don't bother to pay their nanny taxes. It's not easy to figure out. But we are doing the right thing and staying above the law.

The nanny has been here all week, and I've been in and out. It's kind of awkward and I keep wanting to swoop in and gather up my little baby when she cries (like right now), but intellectually I know that's not the right thing to do. I know Lexie will be better off with a nanny than in daycare, because she'll get constant one-on-one attention, but I might be feeling just a little bit jealous of the nanny.

We'll see how it goes.

In the Trenches

2009-06-23T17:24:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, we had some friends over to meet their one-month-old little boy. It was also the first time they'd met Lexie.

Their little guy is pretty much the same size as Lexie, who is now over five months old. But he was over 10 pounds (!) when he was born (vaginal delivery!), and Lexie didn't hit 10 pounds until last month.

We'd lost touch with these friends for a couple of years. When I heard they'd had a baby, I sent them a congratulations email and gave our story in a nutshell. My friend wrote back with theirs. They'd lost their first baby, a boy, at 22 weeks to a devastating heart defect, and that pregnancy was followed by another miscarriage before they finally succeeded in having a baby.

Somehow, hearing that they'd had trouble too -- that they hadn't sailed easily into parenthood -- made me feel that we were allied with them, like we're together on some big IF team. It's the friends who've had difficulties that I find it easier to relate to, easier to keep in touch with.

I'm sure that, over the years, the whole painful process of becoming parents will recede into the haze of the past, but right now, it's very raw, and when I'm with those friends, I know we won't find ourselves inadvertently smacked in the face (metaphorically) by some remark made in total innocence by those who haven't been on the IF rollercoaster. Even questions about whether we want to have more kids would have to result in a long explanation.

I could always use the generic response of "You'll be the first to know." But frankly, I'm already tired of using that one from our pre-baby days.

I don't know -- I'm having trouble really expressing my feelings about this. It's not fair to pull away from some friends just because they had an easy time having a family. But then, life's not fair, right? For now, it's nice just to stick with the people on my team.

Pup Update: He's Doing Better!

2009-06-22T22:03:00.001+01:00

Barkley is on the mend and doing better! Thanks everyone for your good wishes.

Snakebite in Mississippi

2009-06-22T00:32:00.007+01:00

My mother-in-law has had a tough time over the past few years. My father-in-law is sick and she's his primary caretaker and the family breadwinner. It's created a lot of stress. Two years ago, her mom (Grandma Sara) passed away. She was pretty low. And then, when we were at the cemetery looking for a good spot for Grandma Sara's remains, we found a little puppy.

My mother-in-law took him home and named him Barkley. He has been a bright spot during a very dark time, as my father-in-law has continued to decline. Barkley made himself at home on their farm, getting his exercise attempting to herd the feral cats. He has grown up to look kind of like a half-corgi, half-spaniel (below right is a recent photo sent via cell from my mother-in-law). His breed is one that was never meant to be. As Steve's brother-in-law says, "his parents made a mistake." But he's always been a good dog.

Today, I was rocking Lexie (post-projectile vomit) and I received a text message from my mother-in-law. It said only:

Barkley got bit by a poisonous snake this AM.

I texted her back:

What happened to him?

As I waited a long 10 minutes for her answer, I thought back to when we found him, tiny and alone in the cemetery, obviously abandoned and so eager to be part of our little pack. And I thought about how he's helped my mother-in-law cope since he joined the family. He's so little, I thought, how could he survive that? He must be dead. And she can't bring herself to say it. I teared up. I know that life's not fair, and that bad shit happens to good people all the time. But please, I thought -- Barkley's story cannot end this way. This cannot happen to my mother-in-law after all she's been through and continues to endure.

She finally texted back. She'd rushed him to the emergency vet. Two shots and a pile of medications later, he came home for observation with instructions for my mother-in-law to call if he didn't seem improved tomorrow. The vet said he'd seen dogs survive worse. My mother-in-law reports that he's listless and won't eat or drink.

Please cross your fingers that little Barkley's story has many more chapters.

"Fragile" Baby

2009-06-20T21:12:00.007+01:00

Thursday night, I went solo to the baptism class offered by our Catholic church. We aren't sure when we'll get Lexie baptized, because church was one of two places doctors told us never to bring her, because of the multitude of germs swarming about. (Grocery stores are the other off-limits category.) We were hoping to get the baptism done this summer, if it fits in the church's schedule. But we weren't sure -- we are still thinking of waiting until next summer, by which time her immune system should be caught up with those of her peers.

During the class, the instructor mentioned something about "a private baptism," which would be for sick babies or baptisms that expect a very large crowd. After the class, I approached the instructor and mentioned Lexie's prematurity and weak immune system, asking if this was an appropriate reason to schedule a private baptism.

"Oh," she replied. "You have a fragile baby?"

For a split second, my mouth hung open. I was at a loss for a response. What the heck does that mean, a "fragile baby"? I sure didn't want to answer in the affirmative.

So I burst out laughing, tears collecting in the corners of my eyes.

And the awkwardness descended upon us like a cloud.

Then I explained that I didn't like to think of my daughter as fragile, although she does need a little extra help and protection. I think the woman was a little chagrined at the exchange. She did say that we could probably arrange a private ceremony, although scheduling could be a challenge.

But I keep thinking about the term fragile. She was definitely fragile when we brought her home. I was terrified that she'd just stop breathing, or that I'd drop her and mortally wound her tiny body.

But now she seems pretty hardy.

Fragile? I don't know. What do you think? Is there a better term out there?

Bus Stop

2009-06-16T20:38:00.003+01:00

My homey Lacey recently started up a blog about her daily bus ride: The 167 Short Bus. It's hilarious and profane and it's funny because it's true.

I hate riding the bus. My problem generally is the hygiene of the clientele.

I never rode a public bus until I went to college in Syracuse, NY. My friend Nicole and I used to sometimes take the city bus back from our internships downtown. We had to wait at the sketchy downtown bus depot on S. Salina St., sometimes for a long while if we'd just missed a bus. There were a lot of "special" people also waiting for the bus -- apparently there was some sort of substandard last-stop mental health facility on one of the bus lines. Usually they were pleasant and harmless, but some of them really weren't prepared to be out on their own and did not handle it well. There were also the standard drunken unwashed in the pool of riders, and dirty lecherous men, as well. We tried to avoid the bus when we could, but sometimes the snow was piled too high for us to hoof it.

So this one spring (read: cold, snowy and miserable) afternoon, Nicole and I were walking up to wait for our bus when we saw this guy who appeared to be following us. We kept walking around the bus stop and so did he. And then we noticed he had this foot-long string of green snot swinging from his nose. We continued around the bus stop one more time with him about 10 paces behind us, the snot string turning into a three-foot-long rope. Swing. Swing. Swing. We then realized he planned to circle the bus stop regardless of whether we were fleeing in front of him, and we stepped to the side. We cringed against the glass of the bus stop as he loped past us, and although we tried not to look, both of us saw the final few swings of the snot rope. It didn't fall to the ground; no, it swung full-on into the front his grubby navy blue parka and sealed itself to the fabric.

Our bus came shortly after that, and he did not board. As I remember it, Nicole and I elected to walk the mile or so back to campus after our internships for the rest of the semester.

Hello From the Nursery...

2009-06-15T19:18:00.017+01:00

I'll be spending large chunks of time this week in Lexie's room as she gets accustomed to her crib. She's starting to fill a lot of her little bassinet (at least lengthwise), and, much as I like the security of having her right by me at night, I know it's getting to be time to move her into her own digs.

For now, we're just working on naps. The first one this morning had a rocky start. I put her down, all swaddled and sleepy, and she suddenly decided it was time to party. She turned on her 1,000 watt smile (see below) and started cooing like a champ. But I know that game. That's the game that ends with no real naps all day and a pissed-off baby by 7pm. We don't like that game. So I popped in the paci, and turned on some white noise, and we started playing the game where she spits out the paci and whimpers, seemingly just to see if I'm still here and waiting to pop the paci back in. After about 20 minutes, she actually dropped off. Now it's afternoon-nap time. She's not so good at afternoon naps regardless of sleep location, so we'll see how it goes. Right now we're playing the "drop the paci" game again.

Good times, good times.

I'm sitting in the room with her not just because I want to play her little games, but also because I worry about her. Her bassinet still has a special motion-detector monitor hooked up to it. It was this monitor that finally allowed me to sleep at night (instead of staring at her all night long to ensure she was still breathing). The first couple of weeks home from the hospital were really scary, and her breathing was noticeably uneven. When we left the hospital, we left without a hospital monitor. In spite of my repeated questions and requests, they sent us away completely unplugged, saying that Lexie's breathing was so great it would just be a waste.

When we got home, I was a nervous wreck. I credit this product with preserving my sanity: AngelCare Movement Sensor With Sound Monitor (see photo below). With this monitor, I could be sure that if Lexie did stop breathing for 15 seconds or more, I (or Steve) would be immediately alerted to the event and could take action right away.

The 15-second warning beep has gone off twice, waking me up in the middle of the night. I just had to lightly shake Lexie and she started breathing again. She probably would have been fine anyway, but who knows? Her breathing is much better now, but you can't be too careful.

Although Lexie is now over 5 months old, she's closer to 3 months gestationally. Babies between 2 and 4 months of age are at the highest risk for SIDS, and by some statistics preemies have 80 times the risk of full-term babies (although the exact stat depends on the study). So I'm not taking any chances. Once we're ready to put her in the crib to sleep at night, the motion sensor will move to the crib. In the meantime, I monitor her the old-fashioned way during the day.

I'm dreading putting her in her crib at night. I think I'm going to find myself going to her room at every whimper, at least for the first week or so. Even though it's not a long walk, it takes a lot more energy to go down the hall than it takes to pop myself up on an elbow, look down into her bassinet (pushed next to the bed each night), and assess the situation.

We need to start working on this now because I'm going back to work July 13. Lexie's nanny is scheduled to start July 6. I say "is scheduled to start" rather than "is starting" because I noticed (when I went to hide our nanny-seeking profile on the site where we found her) that her job-seeking-nanny profile is still active. I'm hoping she's just looking for interim work, versus looking for a better offer. Even if she does find something else, though, the job market for nannies is so bad that we shouldn't have *too* much trouble finding someone else.

At least, that's what we're hoping. Fingers crossed...

At Her Own Pace

2009-06-01T16:29:00.010+01:00

Soon after I found out I was pregnant, I heard through the grapevine that a colleague was pregnant as well. Her due date was just a week after mine. She had a very easy pregnancy, and her baby was born at full term, which would have been a week after Lexie's due date had all gone well. Instead, Lexie was almost 11 weeks old.

Preemies mature at kind of a staggered rate. You can't simply say, "well, it's two months after her due date so she should be on track with those milestones." In some areas, she's a little bit ahead of her gestational age (her age calculated from her due date instead of her actual birthday), but in others, she's behind. I do understand that all babies mature at a different rate, but we have to be more vigilant for any sort of delays. (Luckily, Lexie is eligible for all sorts of help if she falls behind substantially - starting at 4 months [gestational] she will be monitored by specialists and will be referred for more help if she needs it, up to age 4.)

For the most part, I really am ok with relaxing as Lexie develops at her own pace. I know that the important thing is that she is here and healthy. But this weekend, that colleague posted a Facebook update about her baby "having a conversation with herself," and that made me kind of sad. Lexie makes cooing noises, but nothing as sustained as that, and if she's not interacting with a grown-up she's just as likely to be quiet. Or to be whimpering for some attention.

Of course I immediately went online and found "Eight Ways to Improve Your Baby's Verbal Skills," briefed Steve on the techniques, and we spent the rest of the weekend narrating our every move to her. "Now it's time to change your diaper! Here is the new diaper. See, I'm putting it under your old diaper..."

We know it's a little ridiculous. We really aren't trying to create some type-A overacheiver. We just want her to have every chance possible to catch up to her peers before any delay starts to become noticeable in preschool and kindergarten. We will do everything we can.

In physical size, she continues to make great strides. Her length was on the chart for her true age at her 4-month doctor's appointment a couple of weeks ago - she was in the 16th percentile. She still was underweight though - even for her gestational age she was still pretty light, probably due to a litany of digestive issues we've been working out. But we can see so many major changes when we think back to how she looked in January.

When she was born, she was 10 weeks early, weighed 3 pounds 11 oz., and was 16 5/8 inches long. During delivery, she had been severely bruised all over the right side of her head, her upper torso and right arm. Where she wasn't bruised, you could see that she was yellow and jaundiced. She had a thin layer of downy hair all over her back and shoulders (it's called the lanugo). She was so skinny - there was no baby fat on her at all, because that's what the third trimester is for. Her eyelashes were invisible unless you could get within a few inches to see tiny colorless feathery lashes, more of a suggestion than anything else. Her cheeks were almost gaunt. Her fingers looked so long and delicate, without any baby chubb to fill them out. Her fingernails were the size of sesame seeds. She didn't really have any nipples yet - they develop between 32 and 34 weeks in utero. Her little bottom was almost flat. Her legs were so scrawny that it looked like she was wearing another baby's too-big leg skin. Without any fat on her belly or around her legs, her girl parts stood out like a Mr. Potato Head piece.

(I fully realize that someday she may kill me for writing those last few details.)

At her 4-month appointment, she weighed 10 pounds and was 23 1/4 inches long. Although she's still a little peanut, all her parts are looking pretty normal. Her right eyelid still has red streaks on it from the birth injury, but it's operating the way it's supposed to be. Her eyelashes are now long and dark. My favorite thing is her little almost-chubby bum. Everytime I change her diaper I want to give it a little pat.

It's funny the things you appreciate.

Too Much TV

2009-05-23T18:15:00.008+01:00

Except for the six weeks Lexie was in the NICU, I have been watching a LOT of TV starting back when I entered hospital in November. To pass the time, I took to watching a soap opera or two here and there. The first thing I noticed, being in a hospital myself at the time, was the large percentage of characters being treated in the hospital at any given time. Then I noticed several more things that are out of proportion in soap opera world. My running list:

Hospitalizations
Fake pregnancies
Babies switched at birth
Evil twins
Characters missing and presumed dead (leaving the door open for a return)
Cases of mistaken identity
Number of cops
Number of doctors
Car accidents
Multiple marriages by the same person
Divorces/reconciliations
Whodunits
Amnesia

There must be more. What soap opera plot cliches can you think of?

More Neighborhood Intrigue

2009-05-16T17:48:00.004+01:00

I've previously mentioned my neighbor with the three constantly yapping dogs, fried hair, and drinking problem. The dogs have gotten worse lately, and my husband has been tossing around the option of calling the cops and making a noise complaint. For a while I urged against it, because the neighbor doesn't seem to have a lot of good things in her life other than the dogs, and she clearly is unhappy, but it's gotten so bad lately that I started to feel fewer qualms about it.

Thursday night, I went to take a shower around 7 p.m., and when I came back downstairs my husband informed me that he had finally had enough and had called the cops to make an anonymous noise complaint. I was all, "no way." He told me that a police officer had showed up in an unmarked car, and Steve had crept up to the kitchen window and lowered it slightly so he could hear the conversation (we live in a townhouse). Apparently the officer told her that this was the first complaint, and at the next complaint she'd get a fine, and the third would put her in jail. She freaked out and got combative, which, needless to say, did not endear her to the police officer.

We laughed about it (although I still felt a little bad for her) and I went upstairs to catch some sleep. (I try to go to bed around 8pm nowadays to ensure I get at least three hours of sleep before Steve heads to bed and I'm back on Lexie Watch.) A half hour later, there was a pounding on our door. I had been drifting off to sleep, but at this point my eyes popped open. I knew who it was.

I tried to listen but couldn't hear much. She hung around for a looong time, and as soon as she left Steve came trotting upstairs, with Lexie in his arms, to report on the confrontation. Apparently, my husband had answered the door to find our neighbor, reeking of booze. "Didyoooocall thecopson my dogs?" she slurred. "Nah," my husband lied. "We're so busy with the new baby we aren't even worried about anything like that."

So then she proceeded to unburden herself on my husband for a half hour about her sad life. She admitted that the dogs have been louder lately, ever since she adopted a homeless cat; her dogs bark constantly at the cat. She began to ask Steve repeatedly who he thought may have called the cops, and he just kept saying he didn't know. She became convinced (her idea) that it must have been the neighbors on the other side, because she'd complained to the HOA about their failure to rake their leaves. She kept drunkenly asking Steve, "do you think I should go over there?"

Finally Steve ushered her out the door saying, "If I were you, I'd definitely go over there right now." And she toddled off.

We haven't heard the dogs since.

Mother's Day

2009-05-10T20:12:00.002+01:00

After several Mother's Days that brought only sadness, I am thankful for little Lexie today. But I still feel sad for my friends who hope to become moms, and for my friends who have lost their babies. I wish I could have brought you all with me to the other side.

A Small Town in an Untamed Land

2009-05-07T19:38:00.007+01:00

I got a call this morning from the UPS man in my in-laws' town in Mississippi. He didn't recognize the address on our Mother's Day gift to Steve's mom because the in-laws live on an unnamed dirt road "outside of town." Another funny thing about the call was that he seemed to know the last name, but was shocked that people with that last name lived "out there" and he didn't know about them. (My in-laws keep a low profile. My mother-in-law doesn't like people knowing her business.)

So I had to give him some directions.

Now, their corner of Mississippi, is, in my Yankee eyes, an untamed land. Example: Several years back, Steve and I spent an afternoon creeping around an abandoned mobile home that had belonged to his grandma's late cousin, Amy Katherine. Someone had clearly been squatting in the trailer after Amy Katherine's passing, as it was strewn with Rolling Rock ponies. And Amy Katherine was not the type. Also, the TV was gone, but most of her other belongings were tossed around the trailer. We found her address book -- it contained three addresses: her sister's, her son's, and her own. In the forest behind the trailer was ... the trailer she'd lived in before this one (completely collapsed) and several broken appliances. Behind the older trailer was ... a giant pile of bricks that was the house she'd grown up in. And in front of the newer trailer sat two broken down cars, one of which was full of garbage.

This was perhaps three years after Amy Katherine's demise. And now, about five years later, ALL of it has been overgrown by the forest, completely. You can't even tell that anyone ever lived there.

It's a wild, wild place.

So my directions went something like this:

"If you drive out of town past the Sugar Creek Quick Stop, you know that cell tower on the left?" He did. "Take a left just before the cell tower, and then drive down the dirt road for a mile or two. Pass the beaver dam on your right, and at the fork in the road, it's the white house with the red brick porch. It will probably have a lot of cats and a little black and white dog running around out front."

The best part was that from that description, he knew exactly the place I was talking about.

A Run-In in the Hospital Garage

2009-05-01T20:28:00.008+01:00

One of the things I hate about the DC area is the apparently excessive number of people who have an entitlement complex. As in, I'm better than you, so I deserve X.

I had a run-in with a couple of these people back in February in the Inova Fairfax blue garage, and I've only recently calmed down enough about it to write the story.

The Inova Fairfax blue garage is a complete disaster, with dozens of spaces reserved for visiting doctors, physical therapy patients, cancer patients, radiology patients, etc. On a busy day, there's a lot of jockeying for the few remaining unmarked spaces. One cold day in February, I was headed in to the hospital to visit Lexie in the NICU when the line of cars in the garage came to a complete stop. Far ahead, I saw a giant black SUV backing down the ramp from the roof. I sat and waited. Normally this kind of thing might have annoyed me, but I was too tired and worried to expend any energy on being annoyed at that point. I waited, and waited, and waited, more than five minutes, and the line didn't move.

The black SUV still sat at the bottom of the ramp ahead of us, blocking everyone's forward escape from our row. Cars had pulled in behind me in line, so I couldn't back up, either. Finally, I started to notice a few people coming out of the elevator bay and getting in their cars, and I figured this would unclog the bottleneck. The first two cars left, and the two cars in front of me took the spaces. Now only one car remained in front of me. And what do you know -- a space just in front of that car opened up. I waited patiently for the car in front of me to take the space, but it just sat there. After a minute or so, I figured, hey, I guess I'm next. I drove around that car and pulled into the space.

Suddenly I heard someone leaning on the horn. And I mean leaning. I decided to ignore it as I pulled together my bag and my cooler of milk for Lexie. As I was walking away from my car, Mr. Black SUV pulls up and yells, "THANKS FOR STEALING OUR SPACE." I continued to ignore him. "I JUST DROPPED OFF MY PREGNANT WIFE!" Oooooh, wrong thing to say to me.

"OH YEAH?" I yelled back. "WELL I'M GOING TO VISIT MY PREEMIE IN THE NICU." He sped off like the witless coward he was. He probably gave me the finger or something, but I didn't look back. I was a little thrown -- it had been a long while since I'd had to fight with someone like that, but I tried to calm down and headed into the elevator bay.

Standing inside the door was a young-ish pregnant woman. She looked expensive. She watched me walk by, probably saw that I looked exhausted and frazzled -- like a weak, easy target -- and she made a big mistake.

"Thanks for stealing our space," she tossed at my back, maneuvering to show off her pregnant belly as I turned my head.

I stopped.

I turned around.

I engaged.

"I had no idea it was 'your' space. I'd been waiting forever without moving and a space finally opened up. I had just as much right to that space as you did." My voice rose and she began to shrink away, muttering a few "never minds" -- ha, too late, idiot. "And this is a hospital. We've ALL got problems. I'M GOING IN RIGHT NOW TO VISIT MY PREEMIE. I HOPE *YOUR* PREGNANCY IS A SUCCESSFUL ONE."

I spun on my heel and strode into the hospital. It really pissed me off that she thought a pregnant woman at the hospital should get special treatment over all the people there who may be DYING on any given day.

I do hope she felt sorely ashamed of herself, at least for a moment, before she went back to her rich little bubble of a life with her jerk of a husband.

Gratuitous Lexie Photos

2009-04-30T22:00:00.003+01:00

These are probably long overdue. Plus, I remain too tired to pull together the ideas swirling around in my head.

Lexie likes her paci when she gets stressed out. It's no joke:

She's kind of an escape artist. She likes the swaddle, but that doesn't stop her from trying to bust out:

Here she was on one of those hot April days, in her first summer outfit:

Denizens of the Night

2009-04-21T17:51:00.002+01:00

The other night, I was getting a bottle out of the fridge around 4 a.m. when I noticed a car parked haphazardly across the street, engine running, lights on, driver's door open. And then I saw a middle-aged woman in dumpy clothes running toward our house. Full speed. With what looked like alarm on her face.

My heart started racing. Why was this woman running toward me? Did she see me in the kitchen with the light on? Does she need my help? Is she being chased by someone dangerous?

Holy shit! She was running up our sidewalk. Should I yell for Steve? Oh my god!

Then I heard a smack on the porch and saw her run back down the sidewalk, jump into her car, and speed away.

I stood frozen in the kitchen, Lexie in my arms, heart pounding. Finally I made a decision. I threw open the front door.

And I saw it -- sitting right at my doorstep:

The Washington Post.

Packing Up the Maternity Clothes

2009-04-18T04:06:00.003+01:00

One day this past week, Lexie decided to nap for more than 30 minutes, for a change. I took the opportunity (after hurriedly going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth and washing my face) to pack up most of my maternity clothes. It was a little bit sad -- I never had a chance to wear the majority of the garments, so the whole process just reminded me of my jacked-up pregnancy and Lexie's resulting premature birth.

Pregnancy did not go the way I expected, at all. I knew the risks of my condition, but the statement of risks was always accompanied by something to the effect of "but most women with unicornuate uteruses don't know they have them until they have a full-term C-section, and there are probably tons of women who never find out, blah blah blah. So you could go full term!" I was cautiously optimistic, and never expected that I might have such a close brush with worst-case scenarios.

At this point, I don't see myself ever needing the maternity clothes again. My body really isn't made to carry babies, and I can't imagine going through bedrest with a child already at home. If we have an unlikely "accident," we'll play those cards as they're dealt. But that's the decision for now.

In baby news, Lexie recently passed the three-month mark, although she's more similar to a one-month old in her development and abilities. She's gaining weight and seems to be learning every day. She's not doing so well in the sleep department because she's been having stomach issues that wake her up pretty regularly. We started her on a new formula today and are reeeeeally hoping it clears up the problem. I'm dreaming of getting more than three interrupted hours of sleep a night. If only. I never knew I'd be able to go this long on such an extended sleep deficit. I've heard that sleep deprivation is cumulative. I'm easily 250+ hours in the hole in the six weeks since Lexie came home.

It's hard to be profound on so little sleep. So here's a gratuitous shot of Lexie in her Easter hat.

March 20 and March 27

2009-03-31T21:58:00.008+01:00

Lexie's due date, March 20, passed without fanfare 11 days ago. In a lot of ways she's acting like a newborn, but in a few ways she's a little ahead of newborn skills. She's almost able to hold her head up consistently now, and she tries to hold her own bottle too. I know it will be a long road, but hopefully by age 2 she'll be caught up for her actual age, versus her gestational age (11 days today). Below, a shot of Lexie around her due date. (Note busted swaddle. Don't worry -- we were keeping an eye on her. We're not leaving any loose bedding in the crib or anything like that.)

On March 27, Steve and I went out to dinner for our 5th anniversary. My mom babysat. She was trying to get us to go to a movie as well, but I figured we'd just fall asleep if we sat down in the dark, so we kept it down to just dinner. As we drove down the street away from the house, I wondered if it would be bad form if I napped in the car en route to the restaurant, an Asian fusion place in Old Town Alexandria. I managed to stay awake for the ride, but it wasn't easy.

We had a nice meal, and actually managed to talk about a few things other than the baby. Steve had some hot sake, but I passed on the booze, since I'm still pumping and not making enough to feel right "pumping and dumping," even just this one time. Not to mention the fact that any alcohol at all would likely have put me under the table -- I haven't had a drop since July.

It's been a long time since I went out to dinner. So long, in fact, that as I finished a breadstick I came appallingly close to tossing the last bite onto the floor for my dog. Who obviously would not have been at the restaurant. Luckily I caught myself at the last minute.

That night, Steve and my mom gave me the ultimate gift -- a full night's sleep. I felt like a new woman! And I'm looking forward to the day some months in the future when that becomes the norm once again.

Two Weeks Home

2009-03-12T20:28:00.007Z

Alexandra has been home with us now for two weeks, which marks the first two weeks since November that no member of our family has been in residence at the hospital. I still think of the families there and all the babies in the NICU. This whole experience has brought me countless new perspectives, even just walking around the hospital.

Whenever I'd see women in their hospital gowns being wheeled into the NICU to see their premature babies for the first time, I'd think, "that was me."

Up on the 6th floor, where Lexie lived for two weeks just down the hall from my old room, I'd see glimpses of the women on bedrest and think, "that was me."

When I'd see tired, worried-looking men getting off the elevator with takeout dinner for their hospitalized wives, I'd think, "that was Steve."

When we were finally checking out of the NICU, I saw other mothers watching me and I knew what they were thinking, because that had been me, every day until it was our turn.

My mom is visiting this week, helping us get some extra sleep. Lexie is doing well here at home, although she hasn't quite taken to her bassinet the way she did her NICU crib. She's a great sleeper now as long as someone is holding her. We're trying to get her used to the bassinet, little by little.

It hasn't been an easy road to parenthood, so I'm wired to expect adversity. Because preemies are more likely to die of SIDS, I'm completely paranoid. This probably contributes to my wanting to hold her as much as possible. (Then I can make sure she's still breathing.) I know I'll have to chill out, especially when Steve goes back to work and I'm on my own here at home, but for now this makes me feel better.

Here's Lexie hanging out in her bouncy seat. She's not too sure about it.

Here's a shot of her fluffy hair, post bath, while she chews on my sweatshirt.

She's Home!

2009-02-27T23:51:00.002Z

We brought her home yesterday afternoon and things are going well. Thank you everyone for all your support!

Close, but No Cigar

2009-02-26T00:18:00.004Z

Yesterday, we got the big news that Lexie might be able to go home today. What?! Today, you say?! Holy crap, we need to run out of here and clean up the house, finish putting together the bassinet, clean off the changing table, install the carseat, and omygod what else...

Today, Steve and I headed in there, Lexie's "going home" outfit and carseat in hand, nervous and excited to bring our girl home. But Lexie had other plans, spending the day sleeping almost nonstop, barely waking up to eat. And she didn't eat enough to get the OK to leave.

On the bright side, she passed her "car seat challenge."

We suspect the sleepiness was due to her Synagis shot last night. It's not a scientifically known side effect, but all babies are different, and *something* was causing her to be out of it.

Hopefully tomorrow will be the big day. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, Steve and I went out to dinner. It might be a while before we can do that again.

Pump Room Soundtrack

2009-02-22T11:14:00.000Z

The NICU provides a pumping room for NICU moms who spend a lot of time with their babies. It has its own culture and etiquette, which I won't get into here. It also has its own radio, which is worth mentioning for the sheer inappropriateness of much of the music.

Some songs I've heard while pumping:
Black Dog, Led Zeppelin
Nights in White Satin, Moody Blues
The Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
Free Bird, Lynyrd Skynyrd (seriously)
We Will Rock You, Queen

The last one was the most jarring. I mean really.

Today, I finally heard what I deemed an appropriate song for the environment (the chorus, at least) -- Red Rubber Ball by Cyrkle:

And I think it's gonna be all right.
Yeah, the worst is over now,
The morning sun is shining like a Red Rubber Ball.

36 Weeks

2009-02-21T11:01:00.001Z

Today Lexie reached the equivalent of 36 weeks gestation. This had been the goal when I checked into the hospital in November -- getting the pregnancy to 36 weeks. Obviously we didn't quite make it.

Last week Lexie was moved to yet another "step down" room for babies who just need to learn to eat and grow. It happens to be on the 6th floor (the regular NICU is on the 2nd floor). And it happens to be within spitting distance of the hospital room I lived in for so many weeks. Every day I see my old door at the end of the hallway. It's always closed. Inevitably, I've been thinking a lot about an alternate universe in which I am still behind that door. In that alternate universe, today I walked out the door on my own and headed home to wait out the rest of my pregnancy, instead of being quickly wheeled out, terrified, heading to the labor and delivery floor many weeks too early.

But things continue to improve in real life. Yesterday Lexie's feeding tube was removed. That's not entirely accurate -- it would be more accurate to say that Lexie pulled out her feeding tube again. And her doctor decided not to replace it as long as Lexie continues to eat enough on her own. So far, so good. She looks like a regular little baby now without the tube taped to her little face.

In other real-life news, we just received our copy of Lexie's birth certificate as well as her Social Security card. She's not even supposed to be born yet, and already she's just a number in the eyes of the government. Welcome to the world, kiddo. We're so glad you're here.

Pumpin' Ain't Easy (NICU Mother Theme)

2009-02-19T02:08:00.007Z

As you know, I've been spending a lot of time working to produce enough healthy food for little Alexandra. It's a struggle for NICU moms, because our babies aren't with us -- the hormones don't quite kick in the way they do when you're with your baby 24x7. Plus, one of the most common tips, "think about your baby," is more likely to stress you out ("I wonder how she's doing ... I hope she's not crying ... I hope she's gaining weight ... I hope she doesn't feel all alone ..."), especially in the early days when you can't even hold your baby, than it is to create happy warm babymom feelings.

Anyway, as an outlet for my frustration (and yes, I've talked to the lactation consultants -- I'm working it out), I came up with this interpretation of a hiphop classic.

Pumpin' Ain't Easy (NICU Mother Theme)
[With Apologies to Ice-T]

NICU mother's in the house...
Grab yo' phlanges

Pumpin ain't pumpin ain't easy woman [repeat 4X]

Take a look at me, everything I wear's stretched out
Pump baby, I can't see my nips with the lights out
This is how I do it, pumping milk really blows
NICU mother baby, and it's a heavy load
Step back, hater make a little room for my hose
Slippers on my feet, hope the milk really flows
Baby is the reason all the real pumpers know that
NICU mother puts pump to breast
She got no chance trying not to get stressed
I pump on the right and I pump on the left
If you don't dig the pumpin I could really care less
Increase my supply, increase my supply baby

Pumpin ain't pumpin ain't easy woman [repeat 3X]
Pumpin ain't pumpin ain't easy...

Lexie Update

2009-02-18T00:50:00.002Z

I've been spending all my time at the hospital, pumping (ouch), eating, and a bit of sleeping here and there, so blogging has taken a backseat for now. But I wanted to post a quick update for anyone who's still checking in.

Alexandra now weighs 4 pounds, 13 ounces. She'll be allowed to come home once she can eat all of her meals on her own, instead of getting too tired with the bottle and needing to supplement with a feeding tube. She also needs to keep breathing steadily during those feeds -- right now, when she gets really tired of all the exertion during a feed, she sometimes starts breathing shallowly or forgets to breathe for a little while. (This causes what is called a "desat," in which her blood oxygen level starts to decline.) She needs to go a week without a major desat. She had one yesterday, so as of now the earliest she could come home is the 23rd. That said, the clock keeps restarting on the 7 days, so we haven't begun a real countdown yet. Maybe if she gets to 3 or 4 days without a desat while eating well then we'll start to get excited.

People keep telling us "get some sleep now!" As if we're sleeping soundly all night long. I'm pumping regularly, which seriously interferes with my sleep schedule, and to tell you the truth, you don't sleep very soundly when your baby's in the NICU. (This is why NICU parents are given a special phone number to call for an update anytime, day or night.) I know people are just trying to think of something to say, but they really don't fully understand what's going on.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer until Lexie comes home. I'm looking forward to staying in the house all day long with my baby. And to being awakened regularly by her little lungs.

Nine Weeks in Exile

2009-02-01T00:26:00.008Z

Now that I'm out of the hospital, the time I spent there seems like a vague bubble interrupting my life. In a normal life, a lot happens in nine weeks. Think about what can happen through nine weeks at work. Projects start and end. People start new jobs and begin to become one of the gang. Workplace dramas arise and subside.

Over nine weeks, Fall turns to Winter.

Relationships can begin and end.

Fortunes can be made and lost.

And in nine weeks, a tiny baby can be saved.

Stepping Down Early!

2009-01-30T00:11:00.003Z

We got the big news tonight that Alexandra will be moving into the step down room with the next shift change at the NICU. She still has the feeding tube but is doing pretty well on her bottle feeds (only 10ml, but you have to start somewhere). The step down room seems much calmer than the room she's in now. The doctors basically said that she doesn't need the intensive monitoring that is given in the big room.

Go Lexie!

Eating and Growing

2009-01-29T16:20:00.003Z

Alexandra is still doing pretty well in her little NICU box. She's off her IV and gets all her nutrition now via formula and breastmilk from my meager supply. Most of it comes via her feeding tube, but she's also started taking a bottle three times a day and usually eats 5-10 ml from it before losing interest. The doctors have been very encouraging about her bottle experiences. She's been steadily gaining weight since losing a few ounces her first week and now weighs more than her birthweight.

We've done a little bit of "Kangaroo Care" (in which the baby is placed skin-to-skin on a parent) and she seemed to really like it -- she usually cries when the nurse takes her away.

The only minor setbacks are some periodic minor "desats" (during which the oxygen saturation of her blood sinks below 88%) -- the doctors say this is totally normal for preemies -- and that she's having a little trouble maintaining her body temperature. The doctors turned down the temp slightly in her isolette to see if she's able to keep herself warm, and it seems like she's having a bit of trouble in that area. Once she can keep herself warm and comes off the feeding tube, she'll be ready to move into a crib in the "step down" room to get ready to come home in maybe four weeks or so.

Update From the NICU

2009-01-22T02:18:00.003Z

We've been spending a lot of time in the NICU watching over our little girl. Lexie is tiny, but amazingly there are smaller babies in the NICU with her -- much smaller.

The doctors say she is doing great and just needs to gain weight and grow. She's breathing on her own without any trouble. She has a tiny feeding tube that gives her about half her nutrition nowadays and they inch it up a little bit each day, and inch down the IV nutrition.

I'm hoping to post a birth story within a week or so, but the short version is that I started leaking amniotic fluid last Tuesday night. It was spontaneous -- I was just lying in the hospital bed as usual when it all began. Wednesday morning I was contracting regularly and most of the amniotic fluid was gone. Ultimately my doctor determined a C-section was the safest course and things started rolling pretty quickly.

The scariest part of it all was after I was sewn up and my doctor looked over the curtain and confirmed that I did indeed have a unicornuate uterus, adding: "You were lucky to get her to 30 and a half weeks. Your uterus is very small."

I can't believe I'm back home on my couch and we have a little girl sleeping and growing in the NICU. We are so lucky.

Alexandra Has Arrived

2009-01-20T17:28:00.003Z

Alexandra ("Lexie") was born January 14 at 3:22 p.m., weighing 3 lbs, 11 oz, 16 5/8" long. She's breathing on her own in the NICU and just needs to stop losing weight -- other than that she's doing great.

She was 30 weeks, 5 days gestation, and was delivered via c-section after my water broke the night before. Will post more info soon, but for now I'm off to the NICU again.

Thank you everyone for all the support!

Antisocial Hour

2009-01-10T21:03:00.003Z

On Thursday, I made use of my 2 hours per week of wheelchair privileges to get rolled down to the weekly social hour/class for the women in my unit. I was excited to leave my room, and looked forward to meeting some women who could directly relate to the hospital bedrest experience.

So I roll in to the lounge, and see about 12 other women already sitting there in silence. I smile and pop out with a general, "Hi!"

No response. Very little eye contact. I try again.

"How's everybody doing?"

Crickets. I feel like a washed-up comic at a shabby Catskills resort. ("Is this thing on?")

I look around and decide, against my better judgment, to try one more time to get people talking. "So how long has everybody been here?"

This question produced a seriously uncomfortable silence. There seemed to be some very negative energy coming from the opposite side of the lounge -- from one woman in particular. I think she was poisoning the whole room's atmosphere. So I directly addressed one woman sitting next to me. "How about you?" She actually answered, and was fairly nice about it. It seemed like many of the women just weren't talking because nobody else was talking. I turned to the woman on the other side of me and asked the same question. She also answered. She'd been here 9 weeks and was going for another 9 with twins. Someone who'd already been here longer -- and would be here longer -- than me!

I was probably hyped up due to the excitement of leaving my room, so I tried the general discussion one more time. "Anybody been here longer than 9 weeks?"

No answer. I wouldn't be surprised if there were four or so women who had been here longer but refused to answer.

Finally daunted, I chatted quietly with my neighbors. (Meanwhile, NOBODY else talked among themselves.) Eventually, the class (on C-sections) ensued. Good information, but no socialization. I could have watched a video alone and gotten the same info. At the end of the class, a basket of giant brownies was passed around. I was one of only two women who weren't allowed to have one (brownies are incompatible with gestational diabetes). That sucked. I have to say, I wasn't sad to roll back to my room.

I'll try again next time. Maybe if I get there earlier and greet each person as they roll in... or maybe I should just go for the stony silence like the rest of them.

Eh, screw 'em. I'm going to talk anyway. Eventually someone will crack.

It's All Relative

2009-01-07T19:45:00.006Z

One of the nurses recently told me that the unit sometimes has prisoners as patients. The prisoners get a private room and are handcuffed to the bed. They each have their own personal guard rotation; the guard sits in the recliner next to the bed and usually monopolizes the TV. Fascinating. I'd made comparisons between the hospital food and prison food, so I asked the nurse: "What do the prisoners think of the food here?"

"They think it's fantastic," she said.

So it's possible I may have been exaggerating the food's awfulness. It's not good, but most of the time it is edible. Occasionally it is tasty (maybe one meal every two weeks). Still, when it's time to eat most of the entrees I often end up talking to myself, trying to psych myself up for the task.

Just eat it. It's not going to kill you.

How bad can it be? Take one bite.

You're 34 years old. You aren't a picky kid anymore. You can eat this. Be a grown up.

It could be much worse. What if you were in a Mexican prison? That would have to be worse.

You're lucky that you even have food in the first place.

The sooner you start to eat it, the sooner you'll be finished and won't have to deal with the food for a few hours.

Just hurry up and swallow it and wash it down with some milk...

The good news is I've managed to get my weight back up and have gained about 4 pounds overall since I checked in more than 7 weeks ago. The contractions have kind of calmed down for the most part, although they still rear their head from time to time. Friday we will be at 30 weeks gestation. If we can get to 34, Baby Girl and I should be golden.

I sometimes feel that we've had really bad luck, especially compared to all the women who sail through their normal pregnancies and end up with a healthy baby every time. My first two pregnancies seemed like worst-case scenarios, ending in the first trimester. But now I understand that some things are much worse than that.

In the past few months, two friends of mine have lost their babies in the second trimester, delivering them too early for the babies to survive more than a couple of hours. I can't imagine how devastating that must be.

I've complained about the food here, and I've complained in general about my "confinement," but we now have a good chance of having a healthy baby.

In that respect, we are very lucky.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T18:08:00.002Z

Unless something crazy happens today, Baby Girl will be born in 2009 after all. Definitely something to be thankful for. I am also thankful that my diabetes finger sticks are down to 2x daily instead of 4x, and that I will be getting wheelchair privileges for two hours a week (just around the unit, though, for now). And most importantly, I'm thankful for Steve and the rest of my family and friends who have all been so supportive.

Happy new year to all.

28 Weeks (and 2 Days)

2008-12-28T22:10:00.003Z

Just wanted to post a quick update. Baby Girl is now past the critical 28-week mark, and on Wednesday weighed a solid 2 pounds, 7 ounces.

I also heard a rumor that some women in my unit get wheelchair privileges once a week and can go OUTSIDE. I need to investigate this. I have not been outside in a full 6 weeks and it freaks me out.

Institutionalized

2008-12-22T17:23:00.001Z

These walls are kind of funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.
-- Shawshank Redemption

I wonder if this is happening to me. I haven't been allowed to leave my room in more than three weeks -- not even for an ultrasound -- and I'm starting to worry about how I'll deal with being out in the world again someday.

It's kind of disturbing.

Good News and Bad News

2008-12-20T20:42:00.003Z

The good news is we've reached 27 weeks. The bad news (for me) is that I do have gestational diabetes. It may not sound like a huge deal, but I was having enough trouble eating the hospital food, and now my options are limited that much more. Plus it won't be as easy for Steve to bring me dinner. I currently have a finger-prick blood sugar test four times a day. If my sugars stay fairly stable they'll switch to testing only a couple of times a week, which would be nice. But I've been having one test or so per day that is slightly over the official limit (even while following the diet religiously), so that makes me worried I'll have to take meds to control it or will be doing four blood tests a day indefinitely.

The diagnosis was a pretty big blow at first. Now I'm trying to get over it and just eat what they give me.

But I'm eating what I want on Christmas. Sugars be damned.

So now I have gestational diabetes, like my former roommate did. As long as I don't end up with preeclampsia or "the herpee" ...

26 Weeks and Counting

2008-12-14T20:35:00.005Z

Still in the hospital after four weeks, and still pregnant. Also still not gaining weight, but I'm not eating the Magic Cup anymore. It's too depressing. The doctors are more encouraging these days about a positive outcome. The first couple of weeks they were very grave.

***

My dad said he and my mom were "canceling Christmas" this year. I think that's a bit excessive. I'm not a POW, nor is baby girl.

Today, Steve and I decorated a tiny fake tree our nice neighbor Judy gave him. It's on the windowsill now. I do think I'll skip the "High Risk Perinatal Unit Holiday Celebration" on Friday. I'm not allowed out of my room anyway. The nurses were all about having "Santa" come to me, but, um, no thanks. (I mean, really.)

***

I have my glucose tolerance test (this is a standard test for pregnant women) tomorrow to see if I have gestational diabetes (GD). I really feel like I have enough going on already and I seriously don't know if I could take it if I ended up with GD. I might have to freak out.

When I first checked in here, I had to share a "semi-private" room with another woman for 9 days. She was admitted for preeclampsia, but also had GD, a terrible cold, and (get this) herpes. She was Thai, and had a pretty thick accent, but Steve and I definitely heard her when the doctor said "Any STDs?" and she quietly replied "the herpee." (For a couple of weeks after that, Steve would periodically go totally serious and say: "the herpee." But I had to make him stop because laughing too hard can kick off contractions.)

My roommate was at 31 weeks, and as I listened to her hack up a lung for those nine days, I pondered whether I'd trade conditions with her if I could have a 31-week gestation baby, vs. the 22-weeker I checked in with. Tough choice. Luckily I won't ever have to make that decision.

If I do manage to keep this going to 36 weeks, I'll be in the hospital 14 weeks. Kind of like a semester. Maybe like a semester abroad.

Or a semester abed.

Still Plugging Along

2008-12-10T00:32:00.002Z

I'm still here in the hospital, and I got a visit from the nutritionist yesterday to admonish me for not gaining any weight. Um, maybe if the food wasn't GROSS I would eat more of it. But today I made a concerted effort to eat more, to the extent that I felt kind of sick after lunch. A new addition to lunch and dinner: "Magic Cup," a weight gain ice cream made by Hormel. Its consistency is akin to a cross between pudding and animal fat. I think I have a weigh-in tomorrow, and I'm hoping I showed a gain from last week so I can skip the Magic.

Thanks to everyone for all the support -- it definitely helps keep my morale up.

25 Weeks Today

2008-12-05T20:05:00.003Z

Today baby girl reached 25 weeks gestation, and with that her long-term odds start to improve dramatically. I'm starting to get a bit less terrified, but I'm still pretty anxious. Yesterday, I had a consult with a NICU doctor. He told me what to expect if I deliver soon. It's scary stuff, but every day makes a difference.

I'm happily IV-free today, but my hand feels like it was clocked with a hammer where one of the the last IV ports was placed, so it's still pretty tough to type. (The needle had apparently slipped out/through the vein and the day nurse didn't realize it.) For today, I'm off the IV meds. It's nice to be able to wash both of my hands fully when I go to the bathroom.

It's the little things.

It's actually been 9 days since I left my hospital room. On a normal day in a normal life, you have thousands of choices to make as you go about your business, and thousands of variables float in and out. But here, I probably have less than 50 choices to make throughout my day, and about 25 of them are "should I go to the bathroom now?" And the number of variables is very small, limited mainly to the level of competence of the nurse who shows up for the next shift and whether the kitchen forgets my dinner roll/tea/dessert/etc.

The other day I was staring out the window and saw a little red byplane happily looping around in the distance. I'm pretty sure it was a model, although it was impossible to tell the scale for sure. But it was a nice little reminder that surprising things can still happen to me while I'm in this room.

Steve brought me a book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and he brought my iPod and speakers, so my long afternoons are going a little faster these days. My mom is sending that Twilight book some of you have recommended, so that is next on my list. My voice seems to be starting to come back (I have been hoarse for a few days) but talking on the phone is still hard. Things are still a bit too scary for me to have visitors other than my family, but I'm hoping to be here a while longer, and I figure if I make it to 28 weeks I might be ready to see more people. Maybe.

For now I just want to lie here quietly and gestate.

24+ Weeks

2008-12-01T19:35:00.004Z

Baby Girl is 24 weeks, 3 days, today. Each day adds 3-4% to her likelihood of survival. Got the steroids last week for her lung development. If we can make it to 28 weeks, she'll have a really great chance, so I'm just lying here on my side gestating, getting shot up with drugs, eating bad hospital food, and watching lots of syndicated TV.

I can't believe I've been in the hospital for over two weeks now. There's definitely a rhythm to the days here, and it does get easier knowing how each day is going to go.

6 a.m.: Wake up for terbutaline, request water refill
7:30 a.m.: Wake up for good, lie in bed looking out window, wishing breakfast would come. Consider watching Today Show
8 - 9 a.m.: Parade of medical residents asking the same question ("Any bleeding, discharge or sudden gush of fluid?"); introduction to day nurse
9 a.m.: Breakfast arrives (not too bad -- rubber french toast, biscuit, maybe some fruit, cereal, decaf tea, milk)
10 a.m.-11 a.m.: Vital signs and contraction monitoring, additional meds if contractions are going strong (lately I haven't needed any extra meds in the morning), nursing assistant comes in to change the sheets, housekeeping comes in to clean the bathroom, parents might call on the phone
11 a.m.-12 p.m.: Shower (every other day) or feign sleep to avoid the Catholic chaplain ladies who want to give me Communion every day. I figure once or twice a week is plenty
12 p.m.: Terbutaline, water refill
1 p.m.: Greet lunch with dismay (today was meatloaf marinara, some sides, and a bottle of Ensure), hope I at least got my roll with butter, turn on All My Children
1:30 p.m.: Grudgingly eat some lunch, wishing I could have an Italian sub (not til after pregnancy because of listeria), chips, and a Dr. Pepper (caffeine can bring on contractions -- and I have enough of them on my own)
2 p.m.: Turn on Ellen, read a magazine
3 p.m.: Consider Dr. Phil, nurse arrives for more vital signs, water refill
4 -6 p.m.: Doze, zone out, flip channels, check out Oprah, wait for Steve to arrive
6 p.m.: Terbutaline
6 - 7:30 p.m.: Visit with Steve; if he did not bring some dinner, greet hospital dinner with dismay
8 - 9 p.m.: Introduction to night nurse; vital signs and contraction monitoring. Additional meds if contractions are too frequent. Shakes, dizziness, and increased heart rate then ensue
9 p.m.: Turn out light, watch random TV
10 p.m.: Ambien, water refill, random snack arrives, start trying to sleep
12 a.m.: Terbutaline

I take the terbutaline for five days, and then go on IV toradol for two. That's the cycle I'm on to avoid becoming desensitized to the meds too quickly. (Usually I have an IV port in my hand, which makes it really hard to type, but today I am blissfully free of the port. The IV port [and the dizziness/shaking] have deflated my earlier thoughts of writing short stories or the great American novel if I ended up on bed rest.)

People have asked if I get bored, but it would be hard to get bored here -- when you're in a constant state of low-level anxiety, boredom is a luxury you don't really have. But my brain is working hard to provide random amusements. I'll be staring out the window and a random memory will pop in my head -- sometimes from vacations or long-ago adventures, but sometimes just little snippets of normal life, like one memory that popped up of driving on a country road near my parents' house.

I'm trying my best to stay calm and patient, and hoping to stay pregnant at least a few weeks longer to give baby girl a good shot at being healthy.

I'd still love to hear those happy-ending stories if you've got any more -- it helps me keep a positive attitude.

Still Pregnant

2008-11-25T17:05:00.003Z

I'm still in the hospital and the baby's still cooking. The contractions keep coming back, though. I've been on terbutaline and toradol. The terb shots seem to work better than the terb pills; the toradol doesn't seen to do much.

I'm getting a steroid shot today and tomorrow to help mature the baby's lungs. She's at 23.5 weeks. I'm getting the feeling that the docs don't expect me to make it all that much farther.

Ready, Set, Triage

2008-11-20T20:56:00.003Z

It seems I spoke too soon.

On Sunday night, I went to the bathroom and noticed a small amount of unusual fluid on the TP. Placed a call to my OB answering service, and they told me to report to the hospital.

I've been there ever since, and it's going to be a while.

In triage the doctors found that I was having actual contractions (vs. Braxton Hicks) and I was admitted overnight until an appointment Monday morning with the transvaginal ultrasound, aka the hootchiecam. They found that my cervix was 1.6 cm, well below the danger threshold of 2.0 cm. Less than a week earlier my cervix had been holding steady at 3.4 cm.

So here I am. The first few days were really hard. At first I thought I might be able to go home at some point, and I felt devastated with each sign to the contrary. I could not remotely wrap my head around my fate -- I would lie here in my hospital bed thinking, "I cannot believe this is happening." Steve has been really supportive but it took a while for him to realize that I wasn't coming home, and I felt terrible to be leaving him on his own.

I kept trying to look for a silver lining, and I couldn't come up with one.

I'm feeling a little better about the situation now... I know this is the best place for me. This hospital is a great one with lots of experience in high-risk pregnancies and preemies. Whenever the contractions get too hard and fast, I get a shot of terbutaline and that calms them down for a while. The doctors will move up to a new drug regimen as each one stops working -- apparently most people desensitize to the drugs over time.

A lot of my friends have been really great, asking to come visit and bring food (thank god) but I'm not ready to see anyone yet except family. I'm hoping to get a private room in a week or so and that should make things a bit better. I'm still sad sometimes and scared about how this will all turn out. I wish I knew what was going to happen. I also selfishly wonder how long it will be before I get to go outside again.

If you know of stories like mine that turned out to have a happy ending, I'd love to hear about them -- it helps me to hear about the successes.

In the meantime I'll be here in my medical prison, trying not to worry myself sick. The first goal is viability -- that's 24 weeks, officially next Saturday. After that, every day is a victory and increases the chances of us having an ultimately healthy little girl.

Eventually, I did come up with a silver lining, feeble as it is. You know the show "Locked Up Abroad"? It tells the story of people who get arrested in third-world countries for smuggling drugs or money or whatnot. Those people typically end up living in squalor in a Mexican prison for like 4 years.

That would be much worse than this.

22 Weeks and All Is Well

2008-11-15T22:58:00.004Z

As of today, the little girl sitting on my bladder is 22 weeks along. I continue to be shocked and thankful each time the doctor reports that things are looking fine. She continues to jump around so much that we haven't gotten any good ultrasound pictures. I have high hopes for the next visit, the day before Thanksgiving -- when she'll be about 24 weeks, the first reasonable point of viability.

I'm getting pretty tired of Gatorade, but I dutifully chug 20 ounces of the sport drink first thing every morning to calm down my irritable uterus. It does seem to be working -- the contractions are much less intense as long as I've had Gatorade or salty food (which makes me retain water). I'm still working but trying to take it easy. My job can be pretty intense, so taking it easy is a challenge, but I do what I can and I'm lucky that my boss is supportive on those days I need to work from home.

We still haven't bought anything for the baby. That's probably not normal, I know. But this still doesn't seem like a sure thing. We did finally start looking into daycare, which was a big step for me. When people congratulate me on my pregnancy, I try really hard to just smile and say thank you. And when they ask me when I'm due, I try to just say "March 20" instead of adding that I will probably not make it that far.

It would be a great irony if, after all this worrying, I actually made it to full term.

***

Please take some time to hop over and congratulate my UU compatriot Sara, who made it to 35 weeks with lots of complications before giving birth to the 4-pound baby Brynn on Nov. 8.

Who Does Number 2 Work For?

2008-11-05T02:25:00.002Z

Pregnancy has a lot of unpleasant symptoms. I've experienced a wide array of the normal ones, and a few of the abnormal ones. The normal ones were your standard nausea, exhaustion, aversions to certain food, assorted back pains, etc.

One of the more disconcerting side effects is perhaps best illustrated by this Austin Powers clip, "Who does number 2 work for?" I think of it regularly. Actually, not as regularly as I'd like. More like every other day. If I'm lucky.

What Are the Chances?

2008-11-04T01:36:00.004Z

En route to our 20-week ultrasound last week, I was nearly overwhelmed with nerves. I've mentioned before that I have tended to approach each appointment with a stoic attitude, prepared for the worst. My biggest concern this time would be that the ultrasound would show no kidneys, or some similar malformation that is not consistent with life outside the mother.

I tried to calm myself down, thinking "what are the chances of something like that happening, especially when I've already had such unlikely things happen to me?" But for anyone who's repeatedly been on the wrong side of the stats, this is less than compelling. I had two miscarriages in a row (there's a 1 in 20 chance of this happening) and then found out I had a rare uterine malformation (there's an estimated 1 in 6000 chance of this happening). I'm no stranger to the short end of the statistics.

Steve came with me to this appointment. We had to wait longer than usual in the waiting room, and I tried to remain calm while the clock ticked on. After what seemed like a long time, we were called back. The ultrasound tech started doing her thing. Once again, the little bugger was deemed "very active" and it took her a while to check all her details. Finally, she announced that everything looked normal, and I was finally able to relax.

I did confirm from the doctor that I am already having contractions. He said I have an "irritable uterus" and told me that's pretty normal for a woman with a unicornuate uterus. He told me to stay hydrated and lie down when the contractions come, and he gave me the signs to watch for that would indicate I should hightail it to the hospital. I've been chugging Gatorade ever since.

We also found the baby's sex. I'd had a strong feeling that it's a boy. Of course, I had a 50-50 chance of being right. I was shocked to find out for sure: it's a girl!

Running on Empty

2008-10-26T20:03:00.008Z

I have this bargain-hunting problem. When I know things will be expensive, I'm apt to just suck it up and buy them. But if I think I can get a deal, I try to gather all the information possible, sometimes to my own detriment.

On the way home from work Thursday, I noticed I was pretty low on gas. The station near my house had gas for what now appears to be a bargain-basement price of $2.82/gallon, but I could barely walk that evening because of sciatic nerve pain and decided I'd stop on the way to work Friday morning.

Friday morning rolled around and I found myself running late. No time to fill up, but I'd take care of it when I left work to go to a 2pm meeting. Unfortunately, 1:30 rolled around and I hadn't left enough time for the gas stop. The reserve tank light wasn't on yet, except for a quick flash that morning that I didn't think counted. I'd be fine. It came on soon into my drive to the meeting. Afterward, I headed out of my meeting and hopped in the car for the drive home. I came upon a gas station, but they were charging $2.89/gallon, and I figured I'd get it cheaper near my house.

I merged onto the Beltway into sluggish traffic, my reserve light still bright, and started wondering how much gas was in the reserve tank. I vaguely remembered the car salesman saying the reserve tank had 2.2 gallons in it. Or was that 1.2 gallons? If it was 1.2 I was liable to to run out of gas on the Beltway. I merged back toward the right lane, just in case.

When I made it to my exit, I was relieved. And yet I continued to make bad decisions, driving by the first gas station because it was on the wrong side of the road, and then rejecting the next (2 miles later) -- I saw the $2.99/gallon price and foolishly decided I'd take my chances.

I regretted my decision almost immediately -- what the hell was the matter with me? I don't usually choose to do things the hard way. Walking to a gas station would be a serious problem, because I was limping due to the nerve pain. I drove slowly, in the right lane, and tried to coast down hills. As if that would help. Meanwhile, at stoplights, I tried to look in my car owner's manual for the reserve tank capacity. The information I sought was not provided. It didn't matter anyway -- either I was already screwed and it was too late, or I was going to be fine.

I made it about 2 more miles to the last gas station I'd pass before home. With no choice, I pulled in, running on fumes. After I filled up the tank, I found I'd had less than a half gallon left -- enough gas to get home, but only *maybe* enough gas to then get back to the gas station the next morning. What really chapped my @ss, though, was the price I ended up having to pay: $2.99/gallon.

Dammit.

More Perspective

2008-10-14T21:30:00.002+01:00

I had a checkup today to ensure my cervix was still behaving. (Thankfully, it was. All looks good for now.)

While I was waiting in the exam room at my high-risk OBs' office, I noticed an appointment schedule on the bulletin board. It listed women by name, and included a "notes" field. In the notes field were things like, "triplets -- wants reduction" and "blood clot in neck." Leaving aside the obvious privacy concerns, it kind of drove home for me how lucky we have been so far in this pregnancy.

Sure, we have some adversity. But things could be a lot worse.

Music Rules for My Car

2008-10-13T23:54:00.000+01:00

Since the XM-Sirius merger, XM seems to have trimmed its playlist. Some of the denizens of the various XM-user message boards say this had been in the works for a while; either way, I'm having to flip through channels a lot more lately to find a song I want to stick with. There have been times that many of my personal automobile music rules would have been flouted had I not continued the search.

My overarching rules are:

No jazz flute
No James Taylor
No "Locomotion" by any artist
No Gloria Estefan
No Jonas Brothers
No Jesse McCartney

These rules are subject to change at any time, and do not include the banning of individual songs (a topic for a later post). What are your music rules? Are they absolute, or are they flexible?

BTW, OB checkup tomorrow. Hoping all is well. Fingers crossed...

Looking for Meaning Where There May Be None

2008-10-05T18:49:00.004+01:00

One of the odd symptoms I had in early pregnancy was an apparent increase in the intensity with which songs would go through my head on endless repeat. Since I subscribed to XM a few years back, the variety of options for my internal jukebox has increased exponentially, but suddenly that seemed to make no difference.

I was about five weeks pregnant when I found myself struck with insomnia, while Reba McEntire's "Fancy" rolled through my head, over and over, through the wee hours of the night. In case you aren't familiar with the song, it's about a dying mother who realizes that her teenage daughter has only one way out of poverty, and it's via the proverbial Oldest Profession.

She handed me a heart shaped locket that said
To thine own self be true
And I shivered as I watched a roach crawl across
The toe of my high heel shoe
It sounded like somebody else that was talkin
Askin' "Mama what do I do?"
She said "Just be nice to the gentlemen Fancy
And they'll be nice to you"

She said "Here's your chance Fancy don't let me down
Here's your one chance Fancy don't let me down
Lord forgive me for what I do, but if you want out, well it's up to you
Don't let me down now, your mama's gonna move you uptown."

Well, that was the last time I saw my ma
The night I left that rickety shack
The welfare people came and took the baby
Mama died and I ain't been back
...
I charmed a king, congressman
And an occasional aristocrat
Then I got me a Georgia mansion
and an elegant New York townhouse flat
And I ain't done bad

A strange song to have stuck in my head, but maybe the message, if there is one, is that Fancy triumphs over adversity in the end.

A couple of weeks later, the Estelle/Kanye West song "American Boy" kicked off its rotation on my internal jukebox's endless repeat.

Take me on a trip, I'd like to go some day
Take me to New York, I'd love to see LA
I really want to come kick it with you
You'll be my American Boy.

This went on for several days. I wondered if my brain was trying to tell me something about the sex of the little bean growing inside of me. At this point, though, I remained completely unconvinced that this pregnancy had much of a chance of success. I tried to just tolerate my internal soundtrack and go about my business.

A week or so after that, as the nausea descended heavily upon me, came another unique selection. The Smiths' "The Boy With a Thorn in his Side" began playing in my head on endless loop.

If they don't believe us now,
will they ever believe us?
And when you want to live, how do you start?
Where do you go? Who do you need to know?

In addition to the clear connection to a fragile life, I noted with interest the gender-specific title, and the fact that my UU condition causes all my pains and twinges to be localized to one side of my abdomen.

A thorn in my side, indeed.

Later, as the 12-week nuchal screen for chromosomal disorders rolled around, my anxiety again neared a peak. The concern nagged at me that we'd find no heartbeat, and if it was still alive, we'd get results that indicated a high chance of abnormalities.

Around the same time, though, "One Step at a Time" by Jordin Sparks (yes, the American Idol winner -- don't judge) started up on the old internal jukebox. Desperate for some sort of philosophy to cling to, I locked onto this one.

Hurry up and wait
So close, but so far away
Everything that you've always dreamed of
Close enough for you to taste
But you just can't touch
...
Now you're feeling more and more frustrated
And you're getting all kind of impatient
Waiting
We live and we learn to take

One step at a time
There's no need to rush
It's like learning to fly
Or falling in love
It's gonna happen when it's
Supposed to happen that we
Find the reasons why
One step at a time

At the test, we saw the little bean jumping and flipping around. Steve was fascinated by the ultrasound images. We got great results from the screen. And as of yesterday we're at 16 weeks and counting.

One step at a time, right?

Thanks to metrolyrics.com for most of the lyrics, with a tweak by me here and there. ;)

Step Right Up. Take a Chance. Everyone's a Winner

2008-09-30T02:01:00.014+01:00

Only a few posts ago, but a long time ago in blog years, I mentioned that Steve and I were headed to Emerald Isle, NC.

It was a great vacation on a beautiful island.

We hung out on the deck in our little beachfront cottage, cooked out on the old grill, ate lots of seafood, drank a few beers, and relaxed as never before.

We explored the island and visited Fort Macon. Below, Steve peruses the fort.

It was very windy all week long. I had some crazy beach hair.

Perhaps most momentous, however, was one of the last pictures we took:

I met this news with trepidation above all else. Steve was hopeful, but subdued. There was no way to know if the third time (our third pregnancy) would be the one that stuck. On the last morning of our vacation, before we headed back home, I spent some time sitting on the steps to the beach, looking at the ocean, trying to remind myself of my very small place in the world. The ocean always helps give me perspective, and I needed it, badly, after getting this news.

I was beside myself for the first few weeks, certain that each day would be the last one for this pregnancy. Even seeing the heartbeat at 6.5 weeks didn't make me feel any better -- we saw a heartbeat last time, too. I kept assuming it would be the same as before -- that is, until about 7 weeks, when the nausea hit harder than ever. That was the first real sign that this pregnancy might be different. (Because of the nausea, I had to cancel a much-anticipated business trip to Las Vegas.)

But still, for each doctor's appointment, I went in feeling stoic, bracing myself for bad news.

I'm at 15+ weeks now, and so far the news has only been good. This morning, for the first time, I entered the doctor's office without the certainty that I'd be leaving with a D&C appointment. Things are looking up, but we aren't out of the woods.

I'm considered high risk due to my unicornuate uterus, and I go to a perinatologist every two weeks now for a checkup to ensure everything is still closed up tight -- no signs yet of premature labor. I can't express what a relief it was at my first peri appointment, when I asked the doctor if she'd ever seen a UU before (typically the answer with past doctors had been "no" or "rarely"), and she said they see UUs regularly, because it's a very busy high-risk practice. I feel confident that we're doing everything we can do to stay on track.

We haven't told many people yet. I felt a deep aversion to sharing my news and having it go "viral" thoughout our friends and family. I didn't want to have to round up everyone who knew to tell them if things didn't work out. Even now, there are people in my family who don't know. I'm not sure when I'll feel comfortable telling them.

I don't believe that "God will watch over our baby." If that were true, there would be a lot more babies in this world -- in fact, there would be more in my house. If that were true, people would never miscarry or have stillborn babies or have preemies that can't survive. It actually upsets me deeply when people say things like, "this baby is God's plan" or "I know God is keeping my baby safe." It implies that people who experience devastating losses were abandoned by God.

I know the answer is supposedly "we never know what God has planned for us," and that, like Job, we are supposed to learn from the "gift" of devastating losses. But the fact that pregnancy is directly caused by unprotected sex, versus some sort of lightning strike from Heaven (Jesus/Mary notwithstanding), implies otherwise. And the fact that crackheads and murderers can have children if they have unprotected sex at the right time also seems to indicate something less than the hand of God in the mix.

I believe what science shows, which is that the human reproductive system is not perfect. For some of us, like myself, it is even farther from perfect. It's a crapshoot, and all we can do is make the best of it.

Here's hoping we've rolled our lucky 7 this time.

9-11 plus 7

2008-09-11T02:13:00.003+01:00

I drove by the Pentagon last night, and saw the 9/11 Memorial all lit up. It's being dedicated today, 7 years later.

I felt like I should write something about 9/11. There's a lot I could write. I could write my story, but I've told my story before. I lived it, and I replayed it in my head for months afterward. And my story, while it seems harrowing to so many people who weren't in NYC or at the Pentagon that day, is nothing compared to the stories of many of my friends.

I'll just say that I feel so lucky that Steve and I are here, and together. And we are lucky that no one we are close to was killed on 9/11.

Life goes on. For most of us.

No Sleep 'Til ...

2008-08-23T00:03:00.008+01:00

The Beastie Boys' "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" recently got me thinking about my prior life in the NYC area. Strangely, my 2 years in Hoboken, NJ, was what came to mind, versus my 4 years actually in Brooklyn. Hoboken wasn't too bad -- it is a fairly safe, cute town with lots of restaurants and bars and an easy commute to Manhattan. But nothing could erase the reality of its location in the Garden State.

I used to go visit my aunt's family on Long Island pretty regularly, and when I lived in Hoboken, she would often introduce me as "my niece from New Jersey." It pained me deeply when she would say this, and I actually asked her to please stop telling people I was "from New Jersey."

After I moved to Brooklyn (Borough of Kings), I cast aside all ties to New Jersey faster than you can say "What exit?" It was as if I'd never lived there. Wiped from my personal history. Meanwhile, my colleague Tim had just moved to Jersey City -- the nice part. At the time, the nice part was only a couple of blocks long. Tim was telling us one day about his weekend plans, which included a bachelor party, and, much to his chagrin, a ride on "The Beast," a giant, loud, garish motorboat for tourists with shark teeth painted on the front (photo at right). Jason remarked, "Tim, if you die on that boat, your obituary is going to say you died on The Beast." And, giddy with opportunity, I immediately followed up, "AND it will say you're from New Jersey!"

Truthfully, Jersey wasn't really that bad. I just didn't love Hoboken enough to stand up against the stereotypes. Hoboken doesn't have much character -- the birthplace of baseball has long since been overrun with young college graduates hitting the bar scene. Brooklyn, on the other hand, has a soul.

Two Plates and a Story

2008-08-20T23:51:00.009+01:00

The other day I saw a Mini Cooper with the following license plate. Not sure if he was referring ironically to the car, or maybe to something more personal.

B1GPKG

Then I saw one that might belong to a urologist:

P SOLACE

The P license plate reminded me of a story told by my friend Deb. Right after college, she moved to NYC without a full-time job and started doing some temp work. For several months she temped in the urology department of a big NYC hospital. One of her duties was inputting the answers from a patient questionnaire into the computer system. And one of the questions on the questionnaire went something like this:

When I urinate, I feel:
A. Intense pain
B. Discomfort
C. Nothing unusual
D. Delighted

To this day I remember her waves of giggles as she relayed the "delighted" option.

It was not until I had had a UTI of my own and had recovered from it that I understood how truly delightful it is to pee with the absence of pain.

Why Is It That...

2008-08-18T14:16:00.005+01:00

...people who announce their pregnancies to the world (via email spam to distant acquaintances to whom they haven't spoken in months and months) when the pee is barely dry on the HPT stick *rarely* seem to have to follow up with a sad announcement? None of the early public announcers I have known have had any kind of adversity in the following weeks.

One-third of confirmed pregnancies end in losses, but it seems to me that the one-third must sit disproportionately with certain people.

I guess some of us are just freaking lucky.

Which Student Is More Deserving?

2008-07-27T23:05:00.008+01:00

On Saturday, the Washington Post ran an article on page B1 about a student who has been expelled from Thomas Jefferson High School for for Science and Technology. The reason, the Post breathlessly reported, was the student's 2.8 GPA.

The student, Matt, (I won't include his last name here) is the son of a Fairfax, VA, electrical engineer and an accountant. He and his family were reportedly "puzzled" in spite of the fact that Matt was placed in an intervention program last August for his mediocre grades and failed to pull them up. Of particular interest is that his science and math grades were a B and a C, respectively -- at a math/science magnets school. Furthermore, his GPA was lifted by his three dubious A's: in physical education, driver's ed, and photojournalism. Matt's local high school is likely the right place for a student of his academic caliber. And yet his parents have taken his case to the Washington Post.

Matt's situation stands in stark contrast to that of Cedric Jennings, also the subject of a feature in the Post on Saturday, page C1. Cedric was raised by a single mom, and his dad spent Cedric's childhood in jail on drug charges. In spite of incredible adversity, Cedric graduated from DC's embattled Ballou Senior High, went on to graduate from Brown University, and later earned two master's degrees. Cedric is now a social worker and is considering going for a PhD.

Cedric has made so much out of so little.

And Matt has made so little out of so much.

This Is What's Wrong With Business Communication Today

2008-07-27T14:46:00.002+01:00

It's been a rough few weeks at work, with a major project taking over many of our lives. I don't even know how many dinners I ate at the office. Too many. But we should be out of the woods at this point, and I hope to avoid similar efforts in the future.

I do have one observation from this whole experience, related to poor business communication.

In a meeting earlier this week, one participant suddenly started handing out chocolate bars. In the disarray that followed as everyone reached for the candy, another guy stated, only partially tongue-in-cheek: "I didn't know you'd be implementing a food distribution program."

This would be otherwise known -- to normal people -- as "handing out snacks."

Where I'll be until July 14th

2008-07-04T20:33:00.000+01:00

We'll be in Emerald Isle, NC, for a long overdue week of vacation. Happy Independence Day, and I'll see you when we get back!

Googling for Symptoms

2008-07-03T21:26:00.008+01:00

Yeah, we've all done it. Pop your symptoms in the Google search bar and see what turns up. Typically I will mistakenly conclude that I have cancer. Then the symptoms will subside and I'll forget about it, long before a doctor gets involved.

But I have a message for the person who stumbled upon my blog today via the Google search "lower back, intestinal, and taint pain" -- that is one unfortunate combination. I'm so sorry. You should probably go to the doctor.

Incidentally, I don't know whether to laugh or cry that my post about an acquaintance's terrible inflammation is the first result under a Google search for "taint rash."

The Perils of the Search-Replace Function

2008-07-02T00:23:00.005+01:00

I saw this post on Mary Ann Akers' "Behind the Scenes" blog on washingtonpost.com, and wanted to share it with my small cadre of faithful readers. It reminds me of a time a friend accepted an alternate proper name spelling suggested by spellcheck, causing her to send an email to dozens of high-level managers that referred to a colleague as Ms. Jerk. Only this one is much more appalling:

The American Family Association obviously didn't foresee the problems that might arise with its strict policy to always replace the word "gay" with "homosexual" on the Web site of its Christian news outlet, OneNewsNow. The group's automated system for changing the forbidden word wound up publishing a story about a world-class sprinter named "Tyson Homosexual" who qualified this week for the Beijing Olympics.

The problem: Tyson's real last name is Gay. Therefore, OneNewsNow's reliable software changed the Associated Press story about Tyson Gay's amazing Olympic qualifying trial to read this way:

Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.

His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn't count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here's what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing.

"It means a lot to me," the 25-year-old Homosexual said. "I'm glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me."

More on Mary Ann's blog. Even more is available (including a play-by-play of the AFA's bumbling attempts to fix the problem) on the gay rights site that caught the mistake, goodasyou.org.

My final thought, now that I've stopped giggling, is this: the word gay has several uses. It is obviously a first and last name. It is a place name -- Gay Head, Massachusetts, comes to mind. It is the name of a historically significant WWII airplane, the Enola Gay. I'm sure there are plenty more. It boggles my mind that the the AFA site approved an automated process that wipes out a word from the english language, replacing it wholesale with a word that only sometimes works as a synonym.

You really just can't replace human reasoning with an automated process.

When Your Herbal Medicine Tastes Like Ass

2008-07-01T02:12:00.005+01:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to try an herbal treatment suggested by my acupuncturist. After discussing the treatment with her, I received my herbal "prescription" in the mail -- there were two types of herbs, one for the first half of my cycle and one for the second. Each daily dose came in a plastic vacuum package, which I warmed in a bowl of hot water before cutting into the pack and pouring it into a mug.

The first batch of herbs didn't taste great, but it was drinkable. There was a somewhat pleasant aftertaste that was slightly reminiscent of anise or licorice.

The second batch of herbs has been hateful. Just hateful. I can barely choke down each dose, and the aftertaste must be what sewer water tastes like. Actually, the most accurate way of describing it is to say it tastes old and gray and rotten.

Tonight is the first night I've finished the dosage, versus pouring some of it down the drain in disgust. I succeeded this time by trying not to smell the concoction, gulping it quickly down (it's about six gulps), and by eating a square of dark chocolate as a chaser. So that technique is my tip to you, should you find yourself drinking gray-tasting herbal medicine.

I'm not sure if this stuff will help. I do think it can't hurt. My acupuncturist also recommended a lot of seemingly random diet changes that don't have any basis in Western science. This is all part of "traditional Chinese medicine" (TCM). The thing is, the reason I believe in acupuncture is that there are Western studies that show the benefits. The other TCM stuff, including the diet, not so much. The studies I could find discounted it. And I can't say I'm surprised -- what diet that allows cooked spinach but bans raw spinach could possibly be based on science? So I have tried to improve my diet, but haven't really stuck to the TCM diet suggestions.

In the meantime, I continue to be happy to be off the Western fertility meds. I'm not sure I'll go back.

Shot Fired

2008-06-19T02:38:00.009+01:00

This morning, I was walking Wendy a half-block from our townhouse when a loud boom rang out. Wendy, a retired hunting dog, recognized the sound immediately. So did I, from my skeet and trap days -- someone had shot a shotgun, and it was close.

Wendy and I started running for our house, picking up speed I didn't know she was capable of in her old age. When we got inside, I took off her leash and noticed her legs were shaking. Then I noticed mine were too.

I called 911. When the police arrived, I told the policewoman what I knew, which was not much. "Do any of the neighbors have guns?" she asked. I told her that a young Iraq vet, his wife/girlfriend, and friend rent the end townhouse two down from ours, where the blast seemed to emanate from. From the cars out front, it appeared that only the vet was home. We knew it was his by the bronze star license plate.

The police canvassed the neighborhood a bit and confirmed that there'd been a boom. Nobody else had called 911. The police knocked on the door of the house at the end, but nobody answered. It's now 14 hours later and I still don't know what happened. The vet's truck sat in its space all day. (I worked from home today.) Nobody else ever came home to that house after work, and no lights are on right now.

Maybe someone was just shooting a snake in one of the tiny backyards. Virginia's a red state, after all.

Hopefully, it was something like that.

Eating My Shoe

2008-06-13T23:19:00.014+01:00

On June 30, 2000, I found myself at a Braves-Mets game at Shea Stadium as the Mets fell behind, 8-1.

This was the first Mets-Braves series in NYC after John Rocker's infamous verbal trashing of New York in a December '99 Sports Illustrated article. I'd bought tickets to two games, hoping to be there to boo Rocker in person for being a huge jerk. The first night of the series, I had that opportunity, and then watched the Mets fall to Rocker's unhittable pitches. This night was Game 2. My friend Tim and I were sitting up in the nosebleed seats, next to a group of special-needs adults with questionable hygiene who kept accidentally sitting in our seats, necessitating a few polite discussions on our part with the group leader.

The situation seemed grim on several levels, so I called my Mets-fan pal Jason down in his regular seats about a half mile closer to the action. I informed him that his team sucked, adding that if they came back to win, I would eat my shoe. It turned out to be one of the biggest Mets comebacks ever.

Final score: Mets 11, Braves 8.

About two years later, on Saturday, May 25, 2002, my brother and I were watching the Boston Celtics in the playoffs on TV, and he became increasingly agitated as the Celts fell woefully behind the New Jersey Nets. The Celtics were down 21, and I decided to try something. I announced, "Chris, if the Celtics win tonight, I will eat my shoe." It ended up being one of the biggest Celtics comebacks ever.

Final score: Celtics 94, Nets 90.

Last night, I watched the Celtics not bother to show up for the first quarter of Game 4 in the NBA Finals against the LA Lakers. My brother and I emailed back and forth as the game went on, with the Celts down as much as 24 points. Around halftime, with the Celts still down 58-40, I emailed my brother: "If they win tonight, Chris, I will eat my shoe."

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know what happened -- one of the greatest Celtics comebacks ever.

Final score: Celtics 97, Lakers 91.

So I have concluded that I have magical powers. This morning, my brother emailed me: "What does shoe leather taste like?" I wouldn't know -- the best thing about my apparent powers is that eating a shoe doesn't appear to be required. I haven't followed through on the promise yet.

Go Celtics!

Monday Night on My Own

2008-06-10T02:11:00.003+01:00

Steve is out of town this week. I do miss him, but there's something about this evening that I'm really enjoying.

This Monday night, I don't have to watch his favorite program: Antiques Roadshow.

Instead, I'm watching the Bachelorette. She's kind of a shrew, based on this episode at least. She just bitched out all the guys for not paying attention to her at the pool. Nice.

Seriously, I think the Roadshow is better. But that's not what this is about.

This is about television freedom and control of the remote.

Airport Rage

2008-06-07T00:29:00.006+01:00

I am currently trapped at the Minneapolis Airport, on my way home from a week in Banff for a business meeting.

I am irate.

Seven years ago, I missed my friend Dave's WEDDING because of Northwest Airlines. Inexplicably, my flight (from Newark, NJ, to Orange County, CA, by way of Minneapolis) was canceled due to "weather," when all other flights out of Newark Airport seemed to be taking off just fine. (Weather, my ass.) Of course, they kept us sitting on the runway for 3 hours, so by the time they released us from our imprisonment there were no more flights out that DAY. I left early the next morning and only made it for the reception. I swore to never fly Northwest again.

For my business trip to Banff, I had to decide between a 6am departure time out of Dulles, or taking Northwest through Minnesota. I should have known better, but I made the wrong choice. The flight here from the Calgary-Banff Airport was so turbulent that I seriously considered the possibility of driving the second leg of my trip home, from Minnesota to DC. At one point, I realized I didn't even care if the plane went down, because my emotional/mental/digestive misery would end. I spent the last half hour of the flight in a cold sweat. We finally landed and I made my way to the next gate.

The only food available is a Dairy Queen with questionable sanitation standards (evidenced by the large brown puddle on the customer side of the counter ... and it's not raining). The food looked dubious, so I got a small peanut butter cup blizzard, which turned out to be a heath bar blizzard. Whatever. I then tried to find an outlet for my laptop. The first one I tried was dead. The second one I tried was dead. The third one I tried was dead. Now I'm sitting in a hallway against a wall by one of the few working outlets as those elderly-transport carts whiz past me. I just ate the weird trail mix from the depressing "snack box" I had to buy on the first leg of the flight.

My cell phone has one tick of power left on it, and my charger is packed in my checked luggage.

Oh, and my flight is delayed indefinitely.

WTF? I just want to go home.

The Force Is With Him on His Daily Commute

2008-05-29T03:14:00.002+01:00

I've seen some fun license plates lately on the road. Two more parrothead plates:

VLKANO
A1ASOU

And this one, which made me wonder what the guy's motivation was. Big Star Wars fan? Writer of fan fiction? Does he look like Harrison Ford 30 years ago? It was:

H4N SOLO

Pretty sweet.

Company Picnic

2008-05-18T18:47:00.005+01:00

Last week, my office held its annual picnic at an offsite location featuring games, music, line dancing lessons (!), rock-wall climbing, and assorted odd snacks. Initially, I looked for the old standby, hot dogs, but finding none, I picked up some chicken strips. At the first bite, I knew I'd made a mistake. I spit the limp, damp bite of chicken into a napkin, rinsed my mouth with some Amstel, and hit up the snack line once again. This time, I chose the mini corn dogs -- believe it or not, the least dubious snack there. They were cold, and oddly sweet, but edible.

I wandered up to the midway with some colleagues, won a stuffed parrot and consumed a funnel cake and half an ice cream cone. I hit the picture booth with a random colleague and headed back to the picnic patio, the only place alcohol was allowed. There I found my colleague Tammy, who was complaining about the lack of hot dogs amid the snack offerings. She told me she'd actually seen a bunch of hot dogs and had asked for one, but she'd been turned away. "These are for the hot-dog-eating contest," she was told. No matter what she said, they wouldn't hand one over.

Tammy said she was considering entering the hot-dog-eating contest and eating just one hot dog, perhaps requesting some mustard and sauerkraut before the start of the event. Once she'd eaten a single dog, she'd throw in the towel. She decided against it, but several other colleagues took the challenge and signed up, their type-A competitive juices clearly flowing. And it wasn't about the prize itself -- a mere $100. It was about winning, pure and simple.

The contest was about to begin, so we found good spots and settled in for the five-minute event, an orgy of encased-meat consumption. Some competitors dunked their buns in cups of water, taking a page from world-class hot-dog-eating champions (see "How to Win a Hot Dog Eating Contest"). Others just doggedly bit and chewed, bit and chewed.

When it ended, the colleague most-well-known for his cutthroat competitive tendencies had won. Another colleague ran to the portapotties to vomit. The organizers offered up the leftover hot dogs to the spectators.

NOBODY took one. Tammy and I agreed we didn't want a hot dog anymore.

Maybe not ever.

In the End, the Odds Remained the Same

2008-05-15T13:34:00.002+01:00

Lame.

Yesterday I went for another monitoring appointment, and the doctor determined that I just wasn't going to be ovulating this month. She said sometimes that happens with Clomid, and she said my regular doctor might want to increase the dosage. I noted that I already ovulated normally on my own, so I didn't think increasing the dosage would be useful. She said sometimes you just don't ovulate anyway. And she sent me on my way, telling me to call on my next Day 1.

I admit I wasn't looking forward to another two weeks of progesterone and the associated side effects. In fact, I was dreading it. So I'm actually kind of relieved that I don't have to go through that again this month.

But I'm done with the medicated cycles. The whole point of them was to increase the odds of a pregnancy each month by giving me meds to ensure my left ovary ovulated each time (that's the attached one). This is based on the assumption that someone with my condition starts with half the chance of a person with normal girl parts. Well, I did 4 medicated cycles. And two of them were canceled. 50%. My chances remained exactly the same.

Seriously, screw this. I'm not doing another one. I'm taking a few months off to do some crazy "Eastern medicine" herb treatments recommended by my acupuncturist. Why not? It couldn't possibly screw me up as much as the meds I've been on. It'll probably make me healthier, because the treatments include diet changes that involve copious vegetable consumption. In the fall I'll head back to the doctor if we haven't had luck on our own and if they have some new ideas.

Signed,
Your Happily Drug-Free Pal
Megan

Commuters Look for New Options in the Face of $3.75 a Gallon

2008-05-14T02:55:00.008+01:00

This morning, inspired by record-high gas prices, Steve headed to the park-n-ride to take the 7:08 a.m. 18P express Metro bus to the Pentagon.

He wasn't the only one to have this idea.

According to Steve, the crowd of people waiting for various buses was much, much bigger than usual. This may have been due to the fact that the park-n-ride's slug line had approximately 100 people waiting in it, causing many others who normally would have slugged to walk over to the bus stop instead. Typically there are no more than 15-20 people waiting in this slug line. The ratio of sluggers to drivers has clearly been thrown out of balance.

(Note for those from out of town: A slug line is a line of people waiting to get a free ride in the car of a person who wants to drive in the HOV lanes, which require 2 or 3 riders in each car. Slugging is free, and it's great if you don't mind getting a ride with a random stranger.)

When the 18P arrived, it was already half-full -- an unusual state. Steve boarded the bus, grabbed one of the last seats, and watched the bus become standing room only as it made its next stop on Old Keene Mill Road. By the time the last rider boarded, it was wall-to-wall people. And even for those sitting down, it was tight -- grown men are typically about 25% wider than the seats.

It seems that gas prices, combined with ever-higher prices for a Metro train ride and the $4.50 cost of parking at the Franconia-Springfield Metro (vs. the ample free parking at the Rolling Valley Park-n-Ride) have finally driven many of us just outside the Beltway to full-on bus transportation. The Metro itself has always been a financial boondoggle for us, costing more than the price of driving to work and parking in a garage, even including gas prices. Plus, it has always been faster to drive. Steve still took the Metro train at times, because he likes to read on the train. But the express bus at $3 -- not to mention the slugline for free -- these are ways you can save serious time and money. And it looks like the secret's out.

But it won't work for everyone. We live in West Springfield and I work in Herndon -- a 21-mile trail of tears through more than 20 traffic lights -- so there are no viable public transportation options for my commute. And there are no good carpool options for me, either. It's costing us over $50 to fill up my small SUV (a Toyota RAV4) every 5 days or so. Steve's Camry may get far better mileage -- or so we think. I love my little truck, even though it only gets about 22.3 mpg (the stated mileage of 24 city/27 highway is pure fiction). It has all my commuting-pacification stuff in it. The XM is all hooked up. A little case of bottled water is in the back. My maps are positioned in various pockets, easily accessible for shortcuts if needed. I've got Advil in the center console and always have a snack in there just in case. My RAV4 features my college alumni license plate holder and my little jade rear-view mirror bauble. But in the interest of financial savings, I'm being banished to the soulless Camry for a one-week test run.

At least the Camry has a sunroof.

Pour Your Misery Down on I-66

2008-05-12T14:58:00.003+01:00

I took one of my lengthy back routes to the Fairfax County Parkway this morning to avoid the flooding that so often causes massive backups on that little-known but much-abused highway that never makes the cut for the traffic reports unless the asphalt catches fire or something on it actually explodes. Tooling along in the continued downpour and listening to XM, I cranked up the opening strains of Garbage's "I'm Only Happy When It Rains," an apropos song for this morning.

As I made my way across the I-66 overpass, I looked down and deeply pitied the thousands of people pointed east but sitting at a complete stop -- it looked much worse than usual. At the very moment I glanced down at the traffic jam, over my radio came the lyrics: "pour your misery down on me."

Indeed.

Some Things Are Just Out of Your Control

2008-05-07T01:08:00.004+01:00

Today at work I saw a presentation by Al Haynes, captain of United Flight 232, which crashed in 1989 in Sioux City, Iowa. Captain Haynes detailed 45 minutes in the air during which he and his co-pilots desperately tried to maneuver their crippled plane toward an airport after a design flaw caused engine #2, on the tail, to break off and spray shrapnel across the rear of the plane, slicing through key hydraulic mechanisms. The pilots flew the plane using nothing but the throttles on the two remaining engines. In the end, the plane crash-landed in a corn field at the Sioux City Airport. Miraculously, 185 of the 296 people aboard the plane survived.

Later, investigators tried to recreate the crew's flight and landing under the same conditions, and were unable to do so. Captain Haynes detailed conversations he had with DC-10 experts who said that the breakdown that occurred was impossible, as was flying the plane if that breakdown *did* occur. The captain said it was because of a few factors -- luck, communications, preparation, execution, and cooperation -- that so many of the passengers survived. And luck was #1.

Then, Captain Haynes moved beyond the standard disaster story into the personal. He said he gives these talks because it helps him heal, even 19 years later. He told us that his family has had its share of losses, with the sudden loss of his wife, the death of his son in a motorcycle accident, and a close call with his daughter, who needed a bone marrow transplant. He said the biggest lesson he learned is that some things are just out of your control. And in the end, you have to just keep going and live your life.

***

Monday was my one-year blog anniversary. For some reason, my thoughts turned to my Mother's Day post last year, when I wondered if I'd have reason to celebrate this year. Then I found out 10 days later that that pregnancy, my second, had ended. So there will be no celebration for me this time. I'll still call my mom like I do every year. I'm sure Steve will call his. And who knows what next year will bring.

One of the areas my job touches on is risk management, and perception is a major issue. No matter what the statistics are for the likelihood of a given event, humans tend to believe that if something has never happened, it never will (until 2005, few really believed a hurricane could devastate New Orleans), and we also tend to believe that the most recent disaster is extremely likely (prepping like crazy for hurricanes after Katrina). I guess that's what I'm doing here, too -- thinking that I'll never be able to get the job done, and that the same pregnancy disaster will happen again and again.

I know it's only been a few months on the fertility drugs, but it seems like a long time. I hate taking the hormones. I hate that one of the hormones mimics the symptoms of pregnancy. I hate that I'm bloated and my chest is too big. I hate having to insert suppositories twice a day starting on Day 9. I hate having bright green discharge and having to wear a pantyliner 2/3 of the month. I hate that some friends cut me out of their lives when they got pregnant, or when they hit the second trimester. I hate that I can't make firm plans to go out of town until I know when my Day 1 is.

I want to just say screw this whole thing. It's completely out of my control.

But in the end, I have to just keep going and live my life.

Thoughts on Wi-Fi and Rubbernecking

2008-04-30T02:34:00.003+01:00

I am an avowed rubbernecker. I'll bitch about the traffic as much as the next driver, but if I've been waiting in line for 10 minutes, or an hour, or whatever, I damn well want to take the look I've been waiting for.

Today, there was a slightly unusual backup on the southbound Fairfax County Parkway around 6:30 p.m. When I got to the front of the line, I stared openly. On the side of the road was a BMW with a flat tire. And on the knoll next to the road was the driver of the BMW, sitting with his laptop open in his lap.

No doubt he was using his aircard to google "how to change a flat tire."

A Tale of Many Sticks

2008-04-28T22:39:00.012+01:00

This morning I went in to the fertility clinic for a beta test to confirm what I already knew -- that I was not pregnant. I was annoyed that I even had to go, but figured I'd follow protocol in spite of the three home pregnancy tests that turned up negative over the last few days.

So I went in, and there was a new woman behind the needle. I got an insecure vibe from the start, and it made me nervous. I have very small veins, and things can go very wrong very fast for me in the blood-taking department. Sure enough, the first stick went in, and then I felt it moving around. I looked, and Bad Needle Nurse was literally sweeping it around under my skin trying to find my vein. She did this for at least 10 seconds, until I stopped trying to look away and stared at her in shock. "I don't like to fish around," Bad Needle Nurse said. "Your vein keeps moving from side to side." She pulled it out and tried again. Same result -- more fishing under the skin. At this point, I was feeling really queasy and a bit faint. Bad Needle Nurse finally asked, "am I hurting you?" and, hoping that an affirmative answer would end the amateurish prodding, I abandoned my usual stoicism and announced, "yes!" This woman then accused me of not drinking enough water. "It's not usually a problem," I replied ... and silently finished the thought: "when the nurse knows what she is doing." Bad Needle Nurse then called in Competent Nurse, who got it on the first stick, as usual. My arm hurt like a bitch. Part of me wanted to go punch Bad Needle Nurse in the neck, but I wasn't feeling so well at that point so I couldn't quite muster up my usual fierce animosity toward those who injure me or who injure people I love.

I was dismissed and wandered out to the billing/appointments lady. I was so woozy that I made no sense when discussing my next appointment. In fact, Billing Lady asked when my next appointment was supposed to be, and I said, "I have to wait until Day 1 and call." She looked confused and I confused her further by actually stating, "I already know the test is negative because I peed on a stick even though we aren't supposed to." Billing Lady looked really confused, but just said, kindly, "ok, you give us a call."

It was only after I left that I realized the POAS acronym doesn't really work when spelled out in real-life conversation with someone who doesn't spend much time on TTC message boards. D'oh!

Musings on XM 65 The Rhyme

2008-04-23T01:37:00.002+01:00

I've been listening lately to XM 65 The Rhyme -- the old school rap channel -- in an effort to broaden my hiphop horizons and give West Coast rap more of a chance. (I was always an East Coast fan.) I can't quite get into Tupac, because his songs seem to be way too serious, about a 12-year-old girl having a baby that she throws in a trashcan, and things like that. But I have become a fan of the late Eazy E ("We Want Eazy!").

One morning last week, a song called "Nika" by Vicious rolled up on the playlist, and it sounded really familiar. I realized after a few measures that it had a really similar foundation sound to B.I.G's Big Poppa. I looked it up, and it looks like Nika was released a few months before Big Poppa. I scanned the internets ;) and found nothing about the correlation between the two. But I know I'm not crazy. Anybody know the connection?

Listen for yourself:
Nika
Big Poppa

Thus passed another 21 mile commute to work up the Fairfax County Parkway.

Eggs Don't Go There! Glory Days' New Featured Menu Item

2008-04-18T15:18:00.011+01:00

I am taking the day off today (mental health day -- no Mogwai allowed) and was perusing my home email when I saw that Glory Days Grill, a local chain with a restaurant near our house, was announcing new menu items. We eat there from time to time so I opened the email. I found myself failing to comprehend the vision -- nay, the nightmare -- that filled my screen. Note the photo.

STEP FOUR:
Vomit.

What the hell was that? Apparently this is called the Glory Burger. The menu describes it thusly:
Our fresh seasoned and grilled burger, zesty
BBQ sauce, fried onion straws, bacon and cheddar
cheese. Topped with a fried egg. 8.99

Why? Why top it with a fried egg? Who is going to order this? What is WRONG with them? And do you notice how they just sort of slip the egg part in there at the end? Don't you think that should be the first thing they mention? I'd write it this way:

Topped with a fried egg, this burger is not for the
faint of heart, nor for those with cholesterol counts
over 200. Beneath the egg you will find our fresh
seasoned and grilled burger, zesty BBQ sauce,
fried onion straws, bacon and cheddar
cheese. 8.99

That would be more appropriate, in my opinion, for full disclosure.

There were several other new menu items too, including a Cobb Salad and a Salmon Dinner. They all sounded fairly tasty and normal. I might even order the salmon one of these days. And yet they chose to feature this monstrosity, this crime of a meal that should not occur in nature.

If the goal was to get people to say "WTF?" and click to see what that thing was, I suppose they achieved that. But I can't say I'm thinking "Glory Days" and "mouth-watering" at the same time right now.

I think I'll go eat some fruit.

The Mogwai Are Restless

2008-04-14T01:34:00.003+01:00

I had a terrible week last week with the Mogwai client. We spent about 16 hours in "writing meetings" during which no writing took place. Instead, one of the head Mogwais pontificated on his Very Bad Ideas for hours at a time.

At one point, he said the following: "The problem is, we have bears and elephants. We need to have all elephants." Knowing his idea was a poor one, I followed up with, "but how can you turn bears into elephants?" And he replied, to my utter dismay: "EXACTLY!"

*weeping*

Because no writing took place in the writing meetings, the writing had to take place this weekend. For this, I am resentful. But I didn't bear the brunt of it -- I just did the edit. Another colleague had to write the first draft. It was his birthday yesterday.

What kind of life is this?

I need to get off this project.