we miss you already

Matty Brams

July 1919 - August 2012

My grandfather looking at me, New Jersey, June 2012

The deep well carved by grief

is the space through which brilliant light eventually shines.

-Jessica Rios

when you wait for it

We are waiting for some big job news. Some big, long-awaited job news. My hubby has been semi-employed for 15+ months, and we're hoping that will change. Soon. But for now, we're in waiting land, limbo land, promising-and-hopeful-but-nothing's-certain land.

It's hard to wait.

I wish I were more patient. It appears that is a theme for me lately.

The distracted feel of the past few days reminds me of how I so often felt early in my pregnancy with Emry: promising and hopeful, but nothing certain. I couldn't be blissfully trusting after my miscarriage; I couldn't count on the pregnancy turning out well. I had to make it through each hurdle of pregnancy, each week that passed, each test that turned out, my confidence slowly growing to the point where I could believe.

And then, of course, when all that waiting came to an end -- I have to say that I do think I appreciate Emry that much more, having waited for him. Being forced to delay the gratification of becoming a mother the second time around. The silky-cheek-kissing gratification.

I guess it's like that when we're waiting for our dreams to turn into reality. You do all you can, and then there's the waiting part, the being with uncertainty. Sometimes it feels exhausting. On Monday, I had a meltdown day. I felt the strain of holding all the elements of our current situation, like I was juggling balls that I couldn't ever set down. Trying to make things work out by sheer force of mental will. Which of course doesn't work. So instead I am trying to float along, riding the waves of uncertainty. Surfing in limbo-land.

And maybe a little distracting myself by reading blogs.

The possibilities we chose for this year feel even more appropriate right now. Abundance, vitality & faith -- I am repeating it like a mantra this gray, drizzly, waiting day.

one year

This past week has marked the one-year anniversary of my miscarriage. The anniversary is split between two dates: June 11, when we found out via ultrasound that the pregnancy hadn't progressed, and June 17, when I had the D&C, a surgical procedure that officially ended the pregnancy. In between, I was caught in a never-never land of pregnant/not-pregnant.

I think about myself one year ago, June 17, 2009. I remember how Mikhail and I employed a loopy kind of black humor in the waiting room of the UCSF surgical center to get through the half-hour it took to process our paperwork. How grateful I was for the pill they gave me, but how I wished it were stronger, to make me less aware. How kind the nurses and doctor were.

I think about the woman I was one year ago with such compassion. She's just been through something so awful - an entire first trimester of morning sickness, hopes and dreams, only to have it all come crashing down unexpectedly. And yet, she thinks this is the end of something. She has no idea of all that is to come - the blood clot that will make her tender and concerned, the partial molar pregnancy diagnosis that will dash her hopes for a quick other pregnancy, the six months of worrying and waiting for blood test results, through it all the sense that she should still be pregnant. That she's somehow traveled onto the wrong road, and if she can just find her way back onto that other road, she'll end up where she wanted to be. She has only an inkling of the strength of her grief, how it will surprise her with its force, how it will return over and over again, the waves washing over her and leaving her wrung-out afterwards, the calm times in between them slowly lengthening out.

June 17, 2010. Today is a beautiful day. Sunny, calm, peaceful. I am pregnant with a baby who dances in my belly, kicks growing stronger by the day. This is where I hoped I would be, come one year. I am happy. And sad. I think about all I have survived in the last year, and I celebrate my own strength. I am proud. And sad. I remember the baby-who-would-have-been, a spirit who is still real to me, though not to the rest of the world. I am peaceful. And sad. Yet another wave washes over me, then retreats.

I light a candle and leave it burning in the fireplace all day and night. As I pass by, I see its flicker, and I am glad it is there.

Good News

I notice my writing on this blog is getting less creative (notice the title of this post). I blame it all on the tiny creature sucking all the energy out of me. But the good news is that we had an ultrasound this week, and the tiny creature is doing great! He's actually a lot cuter now than he was four and a half weeks ago too. (No, we don't know the sex, I'm just picking a pronoun here.)

I was extremely anxious leading up to this ultrasound. This was the point in my last pregnancy when we found out that the pregnancy hadn't progressed. I kept reliving what it was like to come home from that ultrasound, feeling like the rug had just been pulled out from under me in the worst possible way. So even though I knew in my head that probably everything was fine, I couldn't feel it in my heart until we made it through this big milestone.

The ultrasound tech was very understanding about our situation (our midwife had briefed them in advance). As soon as I got on the table, I averted my eyes from the screen. I couldn't watch this time. But right away, she said "everything looks fine with the baby." And then I did look, and surprise! There was a baby on the screen! A baby with hiccups -- even better! (Hiccups show that the diaphragm is developing, and are a reassuring sign if you're concerned about CDH, which was the cause of my sister losing her first pregnancy at 20 weeks).

We watched the baby kick his tiny legs and move his arms, bringing his fingers close to his mouth. The amount of development visible since our first ultrasound, when the baby looked like a bean with a heartbeat and limb buds, was remarkable. Mikhail said to me: "Well, now we know why you've been feeling so crappy. Look at all the work you've been doing!"

I still wasn't able to totally relax until the ultrasound tech ran my bloodwork and gave us the good news that the baby had a negative screen for Downs syndrome and the other disorders they're testing for during this ultrasound. And then my first reaction? I just wanted to cry in relief. In fact, I've been crying off and on for the last few days. I think all the tension and exhaustion of waiting has really come home to me now, and I'm relieved and weepy and still nauseous and excited and weepy again...

Hormones! Argh!

This pregnancy has been so challenging mentally and physically. And to add to that, throughout it, I've been reliving the sadness, disappointment and feeling of betrayal that came out of my miscarriage. But now, finally, I'm heading into a new chapter. The second trimester approaches, and I'm looking forward to when I can go a whole day without wanting to toss my cookies. And when I can once again look forward to eating cookies (or look forward to eating anything, really)!

Meanwhile, Elan's home with the double-whammy: pink eye plus ear infection. Lovely green eye goop. The joys of parenthood...

Old, New

So, here we are. 2010. WHEW.

I haven't known where to start. Maybe I should just do a list of what happened in December, so that you can more fully appreciate why I am SO relieved that year is over. Behind us. Done with.

In December of last year, THE YEAR THAT IS NO LONGER:

- Our stroller was stolen from our carport, which is not visible from the street, in the middle of the day, while I was home, full of shoes and clothes and bathing suits and blankets and water bottles, etc etc etc. Luckily I had taken my wallet, cell phone, and keys out. Turns out it costs a lot of money to replace all the etc. in your life.

- Strange sulfur-smelling water leaking from under the gas meter in the driveway necessitated a Christmas Day visit from PG&E. Silver lining: not a gas leak. Cause still undetermined.

- Mikhail spent six weeks in a cast after breaking his thumb in a soccer game, his second broken digit of the year (he plays goalie, thus the hand injuries in a sport where you're supposed to just use your feet).

- The stroller thieves returned the evening after Christmas, and I happened upon them in the driveway. This time, they only stole beer, not our new stroller, which was in the carport but locked up. They might have stolen more if I hadn't happened to come out the kitchen door, walk through the carport and out to the driveway where they had run to. They took off fast. It wasn't scary in the moment, but it was creepy afterwards. Two men and I was home alone. The police responded right away, but they couldn't find the guys. I am pretty sure, however, that I saw one of them on the street a few days ago, probably continuing to scope out property left unattended.

-Our dishwasher nearly flooded our house the night before we left for San Diego. Thankfully I noticed and Mikhail was able to bail two galloons of water out of the bottom of it before we left.

-The due date of the baby we would have had was December 20. I lit a candle that burned all day long.

-And the biggest one: Mikhail lost his job the week before Christmas. It was a total shock - we had exactly one day of warning - and it took a good week just to stop looking at each other and saying, "Is this really happening?" And it happened on the six-month anniversary of my miscarriage, to the day.

So now you understand my last post, about how ready I was to get rid of 2009. Mikhail and I did decide that we should write a list of everything we accomplished and all the good things that happened in the year, just to remind ourselves that they were there too. One thing I definitely learned this past year was that so long as I am still here and surrounded by people I love, I am fortunate, no matter how many difficult and troubling things come my way. It's amazing how misfortune can actually highlight all the wonderful aspects of your life, while at the same time it tries you at all levels.

We rang the new year in with my parents, sister, brother-in-law and new nephew Judah, in San Diego, eating three kinds of delicious meatballs over a heated game of Settlers of Catan. The game didn't finish (people were too tired come midnight), but when we ended, Mikhail and I were in the lead. We chose to think of that as a welcome sign that our luck will change in the new year.

WELCOME 2010. We are so glad you've come.

I Second That

An excerpt from a San Francisco Chronicle article pretty much sums it up for us over here. The article is headlined A look back at one of the worst years ever and starts like this:

"If there is good news for East Bay residents in 2009, it's that the year is almost over. And if you are one of those poor souls who lost a home, a job - or both and then some - take comfort, friend, for you are a survivor of one of the worst years on record."

Full article here if you're interested.

I don't need to read the whole thing. I am painfully aware of how difficult a year it's been. More on the further twists and turns of 2009 for us over here in survivor-land later. For now, I'm going to make myself some hot chocolate spiked with brandy and think about how 2010 is just around the corner, and man, what a better year that will be.

A Beautiful Post

I swear that this blog is not becoming all-miscarriage-all-the-time. That would be way too depressing for me and for you. But I really wanted to share a post I found on one of the blogs I read regularly. She has an essay out in The Sun about her experience. I've only read the teaser they give you on The Sun's website, but I will be buying the magazine to read the rest.

And no, referencing this blog post doesn't mean that Mikhail and I are deciding that Elan is our one and only. I just think the writing is beautiful and the sentiments are so understandable, at least from where I stand.

Read it here.

In December

It is December now, and I notice that for the past several months I have maintained silence here on my blog about how I have continued to deal with the miscarriage that rocked my world this year. Why is that? Shortly after the miscarriage, I wrote a series of emotionally raw and revealing posts. I did that consciously, because for me, writing is a form of therapy. Writing helps me to process my emotions, to understand my reactions, and to move through difficult or stuck places.

I could have written these things in my journal rather than in a public forum like a blog. However, I also wanted to communicate about this experience. Despite all the supportive and loving people in my life, miscarriage has felt like such a lonely loss. Perhaps all loss is. I know the experience of miscarriage and the emotions it raises are different for every woman. For me it has felt like a death that only I really grieve. And while society might be more open about miscarriage now than in the past, it is still an experience shrouded in things unspoken, people not knowing what to say, women not knowing how to share their experience without making others uncomfortable. In writing about my miscarriage, I wanted to reach out to say how it is for me, to make this kind of experience less of an off-limits topic, to acknowledge the hard stuff rather than gloss over it. For better or worse, I'm just not the type to skip to the happy ending.

I wrote some posts where I started to really delve into these feelings, and then I got scared off. I got scared off by the reaction of a few people, which I feared meant there were more who just wouldn't speak their thoughts out loud. I retreated. Which was okay. I needed to mull over how to use this blog, what purpose I hope it to serve both for me and those who read it. And the truth is that, while I enjoy posting pictures of Elan and the strange and funny happenings in our world, I know I won't keep writing on this blog unless it really serves me. And I think the way for it to do that best is as a forum for me to send snippets of my writing out into the world. This is something I need to practice. It is difficult for me to decide that a piece of writing is finished and to submit it to journals and magazines, when I know statistics say it will most likely be rejected. This blog is a way for me to tell the overly-perfectionistic part of myself to bug off. It is a place for me to experiment, to put my writing out there with less fuss and hassle and patience than is required in the publishing world.

That doesn't mean that I don't carefully consider the words I post here. I know that once published to the Internet, they live outside my control. But I have decided that ultimately, I'm more interested in truth than self-protection. I'm more inspired by sharing myself than by retreating. At least for today.

And so, I write to you from December. Today after I put Elan down for his nap, I suddenly felt overcome with sadness. I flipped the calender to December, and there was a visual representation of why. At the end of this week, a small number inked in my handwriting: 38. At the end of this week, I would have been 38 weeks pregnant. Elan was born at 38 weeks. My official due date is not for several weeks, and yet, I could have had a baby any day now.

Could, should, would. I know these words are not helpful. They are a story of the past, not my current reality. And yet. Grief is like that, I have realized. You go along, feeling fine, focusing on the here and now, until suddenly, a wave sneaks up and takes you down. Or at least gets the hem of your pants wet.

What I want to say is that I am doing well. I feel strong and hopeful, especially in comparison to where I was several months ago. I am healing. A work in progress. This month marks the time our baby would have been born, but it also signifies the official end of the six-month waiting period after the molar pregnancy. And so now, in December, I find myself balancing hope and fear, thankfulness for the health I've got and how far I've come with sadness over what I hoped would be, this time of the year.

Zero is My Favorite Number

Since my miscarriage, a negative HCG level (signified by a big fat ZERO result from my blood test) is the best news I could hope for. And yesterday I got it.

000000000000000000!

Yeah!

Aren't I articulate?

Now I wait a month between blood tests, which are to make sure the level stays at zero. There's a lot of different information out there about how long you should wait before trying to conceive again after a partial molar pregnancy. So much different research and so many different conclusions being drawn by different people. My doctor generally favors the six-month wait, and since that's the timeframe I've managed to wrap my head around, that continues to be my working assumption. My doctor has started to show some signs of flexibility with that number, and I'm not sure if I will enquire more about that or leave it be. I know myself well enough to know that, given any tiny kernel of doubt, I will worry needlessly during another pregnancy. And I assume I'll be worrying enough during my next pregnancy without adding in fear of developing cancer to the list. 

I also feel like my recovery, physical and emotional, is taking time, and I want to allow myself to take that time. I want to be pregnant again, but I don't want to rush the processing of this loss, which has been a real loss for me requiring its own grieving process. I'm not going to say more about that right now. I will, at a later date, once I feel my thoughts more formulated and my energy higher (today I am sleepy after a very productive week).

I finish off the week with a picture of my beautiful and intense boy, who will be waking soon from his nap.

From The Thick Of It

What, you think a writer's blog should include WORDS? Picky, picky.

I haven't been writing publicly much because what to say? The question I've mostly had from friends and family members is How are you doing? And the answer is it's complicated.

Elan has a book that I love reading him called My Many-Colored Days. It's all about moods, very appropriate for a toddler. Some days we feel "happy pink. It's great to jump and just not think." But then there are the brown days, the purple days, and, of course, the black days: "I howl, I growl, at every cloud." Lately my days encompass a rich variety of colors, tending more than I'd like toward the gray, brown, and black spectrum. The bright end of the rainbow is not so well represented, though I do have times where I feel quite fine, relatively energetic and able to deal with the little and big mishaps of life. And then there are the other times, when I feel like I'm barely holding it together, whatever *it* is.

We writers hope to write about a specific experience an essay that teases out the details, gleans the essence of the experience, and then knits it back together with some kind of universal truth or lesson at the end. In order to write this kind of essay, one needs some psychic distance from the experience. 

My blog posts are clearly NOT this kind of essay. I have no distance, emotional or physical, from the events that have recently turned my life upside-down. I am still dealing with the sometimes startling physical effects of the miscarriage and partial molar pregnancy. I am still going to the doctor for ultrasounds (tomorrow) and getting blood draws to check my hormone level (sometime this week). I am still in the thick of it, and it's difficult from this vantage point to even understand my own reactions and feelings, much less try to impart them to others. If you talk to me on the phone, depending on the moment, I either sound completely normal or like a total mess. Rarely am I somewhere in between, though sometimes I try to hold off the mess part until I get off the phone, or Elan goes to bed. It's just not always an appropriate time or place to break down into tears.

Writing that last sentence makes me laugh though, because I have been pushing the boundaries that my previous self would have respected when it comes to appropriate places to cry. On Saturday, it was at the gym: locker room, sauna, steam room, and most impressive of all - in the pool while doing laps. And yes, it was difficult to breathe. My goggles got all fogged up, but I figured no one could hear a sob underwater. I was subtle about it; no one seemed to notice, or at least they didn't look twice if they did. This is Berkeley, after all. But what choice do I have? Some days, thankfully not the majority, I just can't stop crying. But life has to go on. I have to get my exercise. There's a tiger inside me, and he has to be walked. When he doesn't get his walk, he starts clawing at his cage, and it's not pretty. (When I shared this thought with Mikhail, he wondered why the tiger was male. It just is.)

And so, I write to you from the thick of it. These blog posts will not be prettily finished-off. They will likely not impart universal truths or little jewels of wisdom. They will be ragged and raw, seams showing, hems with pins still sticking out of them. Just like my days. I move carefully, trying not to prick myself.

And The Number Is...

4.

I haven't spoken to my doctor yet, but I know that's good news. As Mikhail says, 4 is only 4 above 0, which is where I want to be as soon as possible. And it shows the hormones are definitely still decreasing from two weeks ago, when I was at 49.7.

This time the anticipation of waiting for the number wasn't as bad as last time, but it's still mighty unpleasant. I try not to be anxious, but this afternoon waiting for the return call, I was. I did some yoga and that helped for a little bit. Then as soon as I was done with the yoga, the anxiety came back. Maybe that's part of why Elan was Mr. SuperFuss this afternoon.

Crossing My Fingers

We just got home last night from nearly three weeks away, and I'm on my way to get my blood drawn for my next hormone level check. I am nervous, but I figure better to get it over with fast rather than just worry. I did a good job of not over-worrying while in Colorado, except for when prompted by a few unexpected symptoms (which seem to be turning out to be fine).

After I get the draw, I'm going to go for a swim at the Y and try to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. Yup, there they go. Yikes.

Complications Part II

At the beginning of last week, I got a call from the doctor who did my D&C. She had received my results from pathology. This was a surprise. I didn't know they had sent a tissue sample to pathology - they don't tell you if they do since it rarely turns out to be anything worrisome. But my results were abnormal. She told me that I had had a partial molar pregnancy. In a nutshell, this is a "genetic accident" that occurs when two sperm fertilize one egg. The result is a placenta that behaves more like a benign tumor than a pregnancy. The treatment is D&C, which I had already had when I found out my diagnosis, and monitoring of hormone levels afterwards to make sure that all of the tissue has been removed.

The partial molar diagnosis explains why my body behaved like it did - why I felt so sick and exhausted despite a non-viable pregnancy and why I didn't start miscarrying on my own earlier. Partial molar pregnancies often result in higher levels of HCG, the hormone measured by pregnancy tests, resulting in more nausea and other unpleasant first-trimester symptoms. My body was responding appropriately to the high hormone levels, which might have been abnormally high, though my levels were never tested while I was still pregnant so I don't know for sure.

The main danger is that partial molar pregnancy can be persistent, and if some tissue or even a few cells remain in the uterus, you need to be treated with low doses of a chemotherapy drug to make sure that it doesn't turn into cancer. This is why my HCG hormone levels need to be tested (a blood test) once a week until they drop to zero and then once a month after that to make sure they stay there. A rise would indicate remaining tissue or cells.

I'm finding it difficult to explain this condition in a way that doesn't either underplay or over-dramatize it. I'm also noticing that information provided by my doctor and the Internet all vary wildly, and there's some very scary information online (even from reputable sources), so I'm going to provide this link from the Cleveland Clinic for those who want to know more. It's a concise and, from what I can tell, fairly accurate explanation, except that it makes it sound like HCG levels are lower in women with partial molar pregnancies whereas everything else I've read and heard indicates they are higher than in normal pregnancies.

My situation is different from the Cleveland Clinic's description because I was not diagnosed via ultrasound. In fact, I had two ultrasounds before my D&C, and no one seemed to suspect molar pregnancy. It was only because my doctor sent tissue to pathology that we knew. This makes me think this kind of pregnancy is under-reported, and plenty of women miscarry on their own, go on to get pregnant in the next 1-3 months after their miscarriage, and never know they were at risk for the scary stuff described in detail on the Internet but downplayed greatly by my doctor.

It has been a stressful time.

I have been trying to process this new information and understand this condition and what it will mean for me and for our future as a family. The Cleveland Clinic says that women need to wait a year before trying to conceive, but six months is also a standard wait time, and that is the number my doctor told me, adding that the amount of time could be revised either way. So for now, we are hoping for six months at the longest.

The first bit of good news happened later in the week, when, after much waiting and anxiety, I got the result from my first HCG hormone level blood test. My doctor had told me that we were hoping for a number under 1,000 (hormone levels in a healthy pregnancy can get up to 20,000 or even 250,000 in the first trimester). Given the huge reduction in my pregnancy symptoms, I was hoping for a low number. In my heart of hearts, I was hoping for a number that seemed impossibly low, like 50. And I got it - my number was 49.7! My relief was palpable.

The past month has been so emotionally exhausting. Sometimes I feel emotionally battered, like I've been run over by a truck, which then backs up and runs me over again. Every time I feel like I'm almost adjusting to the news I've received, I get another surprise, and - bam! - the rug is pulled out from under my feet and I've landed squarely on my butt again. In terms of the partial molar pregnancy, most likely everything will work out without any further intervention, but in my sad and tired moments, I feel the fear of having something hanging over me. The idea of waiting at least an extra four months beyond what we thought we'd wait before trying to get pregnant again has been a big adjustment for me. Six months might not sound like a lot, but to me, right now, it is. I am quite aware there's no guarantee on the timing of trying, of getting pregnant, or of having a healthy pregnancy. It's a difficult mental shift to go from thinking you're going to have a baby by the end of the year to having to go back on birth control because you can't get pregnant until your doctor gives you the okay.

At this point, a month after we found out the pregnancy wasn't progressing, I am up and down emotionally. Some days I feel relatively normal, relieved that the miserable physical symptoms I endured for that first trimester are over. Other days I feel like there's a cloud of sadness hanging over me, tinging the world, if only slightly. And occasionally (less frequently than I might have imagined), the grief erupts and I sob until my eyes can't produce any more moisture. The surprises I keep getting seem to bring up waves of grief, fear and overwhelm.

I am aware of the silver lining to my situation. In fact, I thought about making a list of them, to remind myself. The biggest one is that I live in an age when ultrasounds, tests and procedures can diagnose and effectively treat this condition. I have an ob-gyn who I really like and trust. She is the doctor who performed my D&C, an Assistant Professor at UCSF, a personable and non-alarmist woman who answers her pages quickly. Not to mention one of her colleagues is a world expert in molar pregnancies. I have my dear friend Sophia, an ob-gyn in Seattle, who I can call for second opinions and a more emotional brand of comfort. And I have an incredibly supportive husband, family and network of friends. There are other silver linings too, like being able to soak as long as I want in the gorgeous hot springs here in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

But what I have learned through this process is that grief is a very individual process. I am feeling my way through a maze of thoughts and emotions and physical sensations. The journey is called healing. It's not a straight line.

Complications

Today I went back to the doctor in San Francisco for a follow-up appointment because I've been having some unusual symptoms after my D&C. Nothing too painful, and don't worry, I'm not going to get specific on the details. An ultrasound showed that I have a blood clot in my uterus. It's basically blood that, instead of passing out of the cervix, stayed inside the uterus and formed a clot. Even after visiting the doctor, I'm a bit unsure how worried I should be about this. It is something that happens; how common or rare it is I'm not entirely clear. It's not a blood clot like the kind that can suddenly go to your heart and kill you. I suppose the worst-case scenario would be possible infection (requiring antibiotics) or potentially if the clot does not pass or re-absorb into my body, another D&C. That second possibility makes me want to either a) fall into bed and cry for three hours straight or b) go outside and scream at the top of my lungs. So for now, I am going to try to be reasonable and just fervently hope that doesn't end up being the solution.

Elan and I are going to San Diego tomorrow. We will be there for 10 days with my parents and sister, and then we are going to Colorado where Mikhail and my sister's husband Jason will come meet us for a whole-family vacation. I am looking forward to getting away, to getting out of the city and being at the ocean, a place I find soul-filling and restful, and then in the gorgeous mountains. I think of nature as healing, and I had been thinking of this trip as a way for me to begin to heal from this physically draining and emotionally difficult time.

I wish that clot weren't there. I wish I were done with all this miscarrying stuff and could move on to the healing part. I feel like as long as there is uncertainty, as long as I'm analyzing every twinge and cramp, waiting and wondering what's going to happen next, it's going to be hard to feel like I'm healing. I'm still so in it. Healing seems like something that happens once it's over, at least physically. And what I learned today is that it's not, yet. 

This is a time of revising my expectations. I am constantly in the process of remembering and being surprised, being sad or shocked or angry. Every plan for the future is in revision. Life has been revealed as the rough draft that we all always know it is but mainly choose to ignore so that we can go on making plans. Now it's time for me to wrap my head around yet another shift in expectations, and go on. For now, it's to finish packing a suitcase full of clothes that I'm not sure will fit. And tomorrow, on a plane headed to the beach.

Looking for Louise

If you don't know this yet, I am a big fan of Sex and the City. I have all the DVDs from the series, and sometimes, when I am in need of comfort, I like to sit down and watch a few. Or maybe all of them, night after night, until I have gone through half the series. Someday I might tire of this, but these last few years it's like occasionally checking in with a group of girlfriends I haven't seen in a while.

I mention this because recently I realized I had only seen the SATC movie once, so I rented it a few nights ago and watched it again. Maybe you've seen it; maybe you haven't. There is a place in that movie when Carrie, the main character, is lost and overwhelmed and so very sad about the unexpected turn her life has taken. She looks around her chaotic apartment and decides to hire an assistant. And the woman she gets is Louise -- Jennifer Hudson -- "Saint Louise from St. Louis." Louise is warm and beautiful and large-bosomed, and takes no bull, and gets things done. She gets right to work in her positive-attitude, take-charge way to set Carrie's life back in order. In days, she creates momentum. In weeks, there is real progress. Carrie is there; she is not uninvolved; but for a little while she steps into the background of her own life. Someone else takes care of the details, while she rests, recharges, and slowly gets back her mojo.

I want Louise.

It's not that my life is so logistically out-of-control right now. I have neglected a lot of daily life kind of stuff in the past few months, but the pit is not so deep I cannot, with the right attitude, dose of caffeine and childcare, dig myself out. I've been lucky to have a few versions of Louise in my house this past week - my mother-in-law, mother and father have each stayed here and done wonders. Friends and family have stopped by, bearing flowers and baked goods. But tomorrow, my mother is leaving.

And I want Louise.

Someone to help me crawl out of bed and into the shower when it is time, and crawl back under the covers when it is that time. Someone to take over the logistics when I cannot summon the energy or desire to handle them myself. Someone to guide me around the emotional minefields when I don't want to face them, and give me space when I do. I have these people - I do. It's just they have to go off to work, or take care of other people, or they live far away, and sometimes they can't answer their phone. People have their own work to do in the world, while, for that short crucial time, Carrie's life was Louise's work.

My sister told me about her friend, a musician, who created an alter-ego agent for herself, to help her further a career that felt heavy resting only on her own shoulders. So unless I spot the perfect ad on Craig's List and come into some unexpected money, it looks like I will be developing a Louise inside myself. She might not show up for work every day, but this morning, with the help of some coffee and a shower and some strategic list-making, she came by for her first hour of work. And I was grateful to see her.

Isn't It Ironic

It has been nearly six days since we found out that my pregnancy stopped progressing, and probably many weeks since it actually did stop. And now, after nearly a week of waiting, only fifteen hours before my scheduled D&C procedure, it appears that my body has finally figured it out. I'm hoping the bleeding will stay light enough that I can hold out until 8 a.m. tomorrow morning and not end up in the E.R. tonight. I believe I will be in bed the majority of that time. I've got a bottle of Advil, a stack of undoubtedly bad romantic comedies, and thank goodness my parents are here to take care of Elan (and Mikhail and me too).

Thank you for the emails and phone calls. It is nice to feel the circle of friends and family around us at this time.

Not the News I Thought I Was Going to Share

There was this big news I was going to share with you. The Big Project, the one that was taking energy away from the blog and my excuse for how little I've written here the last while. Remember that? Well, that news was that I was pregnant. But we got some sad news last week, and now I'm in this strange in-between place, somewhere between pregnant and not pregnant. 

Last Thursday, Mikhail and I went into San Francisco for a first-trimester screening test. It was an ultrasound that was to determine the risk of the baby having Downs syndrome, a fairly common genetic screening test for pregnant women. I was nearly 13 weeks, and by now it was pretty obvious that I was pregnant. If you knew me and hadn't seen me in a few weeks, you would probably guess. Strangers were commenting in the supermarket when I wore a tight-fitting top, or in the locker room at the Y when I went to swim laps.

For the past two months, I had been very sick. Morning-sickness, except for me it often lasted all day and was at its worst in the afternoon and evenings. I was also exhausted. I spent as much time as I could in bed, either sleeping or propped up on pillows reading and watching old episodes of Sex and the City. Household duties slipped; bills went unpaid. It was a rough first trimester, and very similar to my first trimester with Elan. In fact, I felt like the sickness was a little more manageable than it was with Elan, partly because I was strict with myself about eating every two to three hours whether I wanted to or not (generally not). It was a tough time. I tried to have a positive attitude, still get some exercise, and enjoy being with Elan. But most of all I just wanted to hibernate my way through it. Feeling like you have a never-ending case of the stomach flu for two months makes it difficult to enjoy life, and I felt like I was just gritting my teeth to get through it. I looked forward to life beyond week 12, when I thought the worst of my symptoms would probably start easing off and the bloom of pregnancy would be in full-force.

The upside of all this illness was, I thought, that the pregnancy seemed to be on track. At 9.5 weeks, I went to the midwife and she confirmed that thought. "You have almost no chance of miscarriage given how sick you've been," she said. And then she thought she heard the baby's heartbeat, very briefly, for a second in between my heartbeat pounding through the Doppler. I was reassured, though my anxiety before that was limited to the occasional "what if" moment that I believe every woman experiences in the tenuous time of the first trimester.

And so it was quite a shock when I laid down on the ultrasound table and the technician pressed down with the scope. "There's your bladder," she said. "Quite full." And then she moved the scope over. I looked at Mikhail and he looked at me. He mumbled something like "can't tell what we're looking at." I couldn't either, but I saw nothing that looked like a 13-week fetus. She needs to go lower, I thought. But then she started taking pictures, and I began to get the odd feeling of being outside my body. Watching this unbelievable thing happen to someone else.

"Here's what I'm seeing," she said, but my brain did not fully realize until she said the words "yolk sac." I don't know exactly what week the yolk sac is formed, but it's certainly nowhere near week 13. Further ultrasounds were done and the results confirmed by another doctor. My pregnancy had stopped progressing, and it was likely to have stopped many weeks ago.

Pregnancy math is a weird thing. At 13 weeks pregnant, I had actually been pregnant for 11 weeks. And I had known for 9 weeks. The first two weeks I had still felt pretty well. The last seven had been full of nausea, exhaustion, and a taste in my mouth like iron (a symptom which my mother remembers well from her two pregnancies and which I had with Elan as well).

The doctors at the ultrasound mentioned that the level of development they saw looked to be around 5-6 weeks. Meaning that it is possible that my pregnancy stopped developing right around the time that I began enduring two months of feeling miserable, misery made endurable only by the idea that it was leading to a baby. 

Early miscarriages are incredibly common. The only thing that makes my situation unusual is the fact that I had been so sick, and had not had any cramping or spotting. It appeared that once my body went into pregnancy mode, the hormones were bound and determined to keep on trucking along, whether the development of an embryo was keeping pace or not.

Here is the odd thing: as I sit writing this post, several days after finding out, I still feel pregnant. I still look pregnant, with that trademark "torpedo" belly shape I had with Elan, my belly button already popped out. Every few hours I need to eat or else I get light-headed; I still have nausea coming and going (it has gotten better in the last week, which I attributed to reaching the end of the first trimester); I still have strong smell and food aversions; my breasts are swollen and tender. According to my hormones, I am pregnant. My mind knows what the blank space on the ultrasound screen means. My body does not.

I find myself in a most odd place, waiting for my body to catch up to what my mind already knows. And, though the grieving for lost expectations has begun, I know that until my body and mind are in agreement, I will not really be able to begin to process this experience. I am waiting for miscarriage, or for a D&C procedure scheduled on Wednesday, the first appointment I could get. Either way, it is not something to be looked forward to.

There are many worse things than early miscarriage. I know this, and I am grateful that nature took charge and made the decision that this combination was not meant to become a baby. But I am angry too. Why couldn't my body just have gotten the signal so many weeks ago and just stopped? I feel like my body has played a trick on me. Two months of illness... for what? Maybe someday I will be able to look at this experience through a lens of emotional and personal growth. But for now, here's what I have to say: it sucks.