Right now, Ian is on a plane at DFW, heading home. I am so excited. If I was a dog, I'd be getting my nose rubbed in my own pee. He's been out of town the last three weeks, though we are fortunate that he has been able to come home for the weekends. Madison, WI, Dallas, LA, they all suck. With next week being Thanksgiving, we're really hoping that he won't get shipped out again until at least the week after.

The nature of his job requires a lot of travel and while we both accept this since he makes the stupid money when he is able to find work and with the economy having been thrown into the shitter, it's been nearly a year since he's actually had a contract. Before the recession froze up all of the solid gigs he had coming down the pipeline, we were planning on having me quit The Bank and stay home to homeschool Jonas and resume working on The Great American Smut Novel. That didn't pan out of course and we've been thanking our lucky stars that my job at The Bank has been stable and keeping us afloat (though definitely ass clenchingly close to not floating). Now things are starting to thaw which is great cause it means we can shelve conversations like "When do we consider selling the boat," but it comes with the price of him being shipped all over the fricking country. Under the best circumstances this can be challenging for us (we're weenies in love, leave us alone you heartless bastard) but right now it's been pretty brutal. With less than two months since the baby's passing, we're still fumbling around in the thick fog of grief. Distance adds another challenge to coping.

I get so nervous when he's traveling. Logically I know that he's most likely safe and he'll be in more danger next week when he climbs up on the roof to give the evil eye to a weak spot causing a leak in our laundry room, but I've never been good about having him in transit. And now that my confidence in the goodness of the universe has been completely undermined, I find myself reverting to old anxieties about everyone I love dying. After my dad died just a scant four months after my first real boyfriend passed, my friends and I called one another almost obsessively to make sure that we'd made it home okay. I started dating Rob just months later and would spiral into psychoses if he'd go MIA for even a few hours. And he's kind of a douche (well, and sixteen) , so he'd go MIA a lot.

This mania feels so uncomfortably familiar and I am once again reminded how fortunate I am that I am marrying Ian and not anybody else on the whole planet. Once he understood why I would get so distant and emotional during his travels, he started doing everything he could to set me at ease. In fact, he just texted me to let me know that he got loaded onto the plane and will, like always, turn on his phone the second that he is allowed and send me a text to let me know that he's back on land safely. I always get those two texts each time he flies, and I always hold my breath between them.

I leave to pick him up from the airport in about four and a half hours. In the meantime, I will be alternately surrounding myself with and distracting myself from worry. It will be as if I am working in conjunction with the flight crew and those pesky laws of physics to keep the plane in the air when it is supposed to be in the air, and make it land safely, on time, and without incident.

This is quite possibly the most stupidly awesome thing I have ever seen. When we were very young, I bought my brother a personalized storybook from a stand in the mall. It's still around somewhere. It's totally dorky. I can only imagine how they manage to work that mojo while talking about love mounds and long, wet, smoldering kisses. I put our names in to get a sample, which is why the subject of this post is 100% accurate.

“Where will you take me on our fiftieth wedding anniversary?” I asked him.
”Where would you like to go?” he replied.
“I don’t know… somewhere in nature.”
“We should go hiking in the Andes. By then it’ll be full of escalators and we won’t have to break a hip on the way to making love in the mountains.”

I love the way he thinks.

Hi everyone.  A lot has been going on every day, and there's so much to feel and to write about.  Our Dr's appointment was on Monday and we're still digesting the information we received.  I'll post about that fairly soon.  But I got an email this morning from the March of Dimes so Ian and I wanted to share with as many folks as we could.  We'll be emailing family and friends as well, 'cause this is clearly a cause that is important to us.  So if you see this more than once, we're sorry for the duplication.  I may also x-post this info to pregnancy loss communities, so if I know you from there, I again apologize and hope you can bear with me.

Shortly after Christopher Robin's birth, I went apeshit with the researching of preterm labor.  This led me to donate a few bucks to The March of Dimes and create a band in our son's memory.  On the invitations for our July 10th wedding, we're planning to ask for donations to the MOD in Christopher Robin's name, rather than gifts.  We don't need anything and if folks feel compelled to give a token of their support or affection, we thought this would be a wonderful token to give.  We have yet to send the invitations, of  course, or even the save the date DVD we're supposed to be working on, but the band has been there, waiting for us to point folks in its direction.  

Today I got an email from The March of Dimes saying that Mastercard will do gift matching now through December 31st.  They'll match up to $225,000 total, which is a good chunk of change towards fighting prematurity.  If you have been affected by preterm labor, prematurity or stillbirth yourself, please consider creating your own band if you haven't already, and send your friends and family the link.  If you have the means and inclination donate, please consider donating using your Mastercard before the end of the year so that your donation can count as double.  If your employer does a gift matching program of their own, that would be awesome too.  If you would like to donate in Christopher Robin's memory, go here. They tally up the total donated in his memory and your name is included on the list of donors.  We're planning on printing out the list of donors on or around his first birthday and including it in his memory box.  If you don't want to donate in any baby's name but would still like to donate, go here.

The link to Christopher Robin's band is also at the top of my links list on the left of the page, and will be there for as long as this journal exists and the link to the band is available. 

Thank you so much for bearing with me through all of this.  I appreciate everyone's forbearance and kindness.   

I don't know the weeks and days off the top of my head anymore, but I still go back and count every once in awhile; I'd be 28 weeks along today if I hadn't lost the baby.

When I first got pregnant, I focused on getting past week 12 when the chance of miscarriage plummets as the placenta is formed.  After week 12, I turned my attention to week 24.  24 weeks is when a pre-term baby could potentially be viable, as their lungs are mature enough to react to the steroid treatments used to help them develop.  Beyond that is week 26, when I lost my first pregnancy to pre-term labor, and Jonas traded my womb for an incubator. 

Losing Christopher Robin carried the double blow of not again.  I remember feeling hollow and shortchanged after Jonas' birth, on top of the guilt and blame of having lost the pregnancy and the searing panic that went along with being a NICU mom.  I remember grieving for my pregnancy furtively because I also felt guilty for using some of my emotional resources for selfishly mourning the loss of my pregnancy when I "should have" been solely focused on willing my baby to wellness.  (Hey, since when are trauma induced emotions sensible?)  I berated myself for selfishly begrudging my preterm labor not just because of where it left Jonas, but where it left me.  And as Jonas progressed and became more and more a healthy infant, I left myself less and less time for even the most covert selfish mourning.  By the time he came home from the hospital, I was only allowed a small and unidentifiable ache.  

In the early weeks of my pregnancy, I was talking to my sister about how much I loved being pregnant, and was really looking forward to getting through the entire bit this time.  She said something along the lines of "Yeah well, you've never been 38 weeks pregnant before, so you've never been to the point of 'oh god, get this thing OUT!"  She was trying to be funny, but of course it made me wince rather than laugh.  I probably wouldn't even remember that comment if we hadn't lost the baby, but we did. 

I have never been fortunate enough to be one of those women who get to be "done" with their pregnancies. And based on the sizes of both my babies at their early deliveries, they would have been beefy dudes had they been carried to term.  Lucky me probably would have been righteously "done" and I would have cussed about it every inch of the way, as is only natural and only right when you're carting around the baby of a man with a giant head.  But the boys never got to grow inside of me the way that they were meant to, and I never managed the agony of pushing a baby's foot out of my ribcage.  I don't even have any proper stretch marks.  You may find that a silly thing to cry about, but I cry about it quite often. 

We have an appointment on Monday to discuss a plethora of test results with the perinatologist.  This will let us begin discussing what is possible regarding any future pregnancies, which will finally give us the permission to discuss what we want.  Ian and I have discussed at length our mutual terror regarding the results and are still nowhere near prepared to tackle the next phase of this process.  Yesterday made six weeks since the birth of our son, and life had slowly begun expanding from the Essential Four of the first nightmarish days (eat, drink, walk, breathe) to include things like leave the house and speak to someone other than each other. We've talked through our feelings every single day, but have been deferring many necessary discussions until after our appointment. What ifs abound, and we find ourselves stalling even simple plans for the future because we both felt choked until we could start deciding if another reckless chance at "not not trying" for a biological family could be in ours.  After six weeks, we're now adding another layer of existence.  Waiting has been grueling, but I'm still scared shitless of what we'll find.  I just hope that they found something.  Being a perinatal WTF is not my idea of a healing process.

I admitted to Ian many years ago that one of the reasons that I wanted to actually have a baby rather than adopt was that I wanted to find the completion that I never found with  my first pregnancy.  I just wanted to articulate that need, not have it drive any decision we made regarding birth control or carrying on with our bad selves without it.  And happily, Christopher Robin was conceived for his own sake.  And being pregnant with that baby in our house with Ian and Jonas there to help me help our new addition grow was by far the most wonderful time in my entire life.  Oh, so many losses.

So far we've been doing a great job of separating our compulsion to say things like "next time we're pregnant" from the simple fact that what we want right now is not to be pregnant again but to be pregnant still.  Being pregnant again may still be an ultimate desire, but it's not an immediate one.  No matter what Dr. Tran tells us on Monday, it won't un-cremate our son, make his heart start beating, un-birth him and repair his placenta.  We can only go forward from here.  Eventually.  We'll see how that works.

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.  I'd made an appointment to have our milk recipient come to the house this morning so that I would have a reason to get out of bed.  She came just before 10:30 and carted off 230+ ounces of breast milk.  I'm not collecting anymore. 

Her son was asleep in the car, with a very elated grandma keeping watch.  He is so beautiful; Ian and I gawked at him, nearly purring our congratulations to a family that we would probably have never met otherwise.  After they drove off, we came back inside and slumped against one another on the sofa.  We went to bed, seeking much needed refuge in one another (don't tell my doctor; we're supposed to be off limits for another week).

Yesterday we congratulated some friends on their own positive pregnancy test.  It's so good to actively see happy endings.  We're so happy for everyone who either has no loss to mourn on October 15th, or those who have cause to mourn but have gone on to have those happy (though admittedly bittersweet) endings themselves.  Babies are ultimately the embodiment of hope, and I fight to retain that feeling, despite my own hope having withered into sorrow.

I just lit our candle in the window, and later we may watch Christopher Robin's DVD slide show.  Then, we'll have my sister and her girlfriend over for dinner.  Maybe Mom will come over, too. 

And life will go on, and it will continue to be good.  And it will be even more precious now that we've been reminded so intimately how fragile and fleeting it can be. 

Saturday the 10th was one month after our ultrasound; the last time we saw the baby alive.  It was the day we learned we were having a boy, and had to stop calling the baby "her" because we were all convinced he would be one.  Oops.

He was so active during the ultrasound.  As usual.  Ian and Jonas got to actually watch him kick and jab inside me.  We were all floating on a cloud of unstoppable joy.  After having told Jonas repeatedly early on in my pregnancy that babies sometimes don't make it to term, we went home that night and had the "we're pretty much out of the woods now, bucko!" conversation.  He'd been containing his excitement over being a big brother, saying over and over again "well, if the baby survives."  After our ultrasound, he told everyone he was getting a brother.  We foolishly forgot how far in the woods we still were.  Blindsided.

Saturday the 10th would also have been the day we hit 24 weeks gestation.  24 weeks and the baby's lungs would have been developed enough to react to the steroid medications used to assist with lung development.  24 weeks and we would have had a chance at being successful NICU graduates, rather than a family affected by stillbirth.  I know I suffer from the arrogance of having one badass NICU survivor and preemie babies often have challenges more severe than Jonas' asthma and spastic hyperactivity.  But it would have been more of a chance than we had two weeks earlier.  He wouldn't have been named Christopher Robin.

What ifs always kill worse than any reality.

It's cruel when milestones come one on top of the other like this.  My water broke on my brother's birthday, which is just a few days after the anniversary of our father's death.  We were supposed to meet everyone for dinner that night, but...

I lost myself that day in my second favorite distraction immediately after sex.  I made a 14 pound turkey and enough sides to overwhelm my dining room table.  All eight seats were filled with people. I found out that the milk recipient baby was born.  We listened to the Beatles.  Alistair told Jonas corny jokes, which will make him even  more of a god in Jonas' eyes.  And I made it through the whole day, being mostly out of bed, and mostly not hating the world for going on without my son.

After twelve days of pumping, we now have almost 170 ounces of milk for donation.  Thanks to a connection made via breastfeeding, which I joined very shortly after getting pregnant, I was hooked up with a local couple adopting a baby.  (Thank you,rock_grrl, for putting me in touch with these awesome parents-to-be.)  Production was slow going at first, and there were many abysmal pumping sessions where I tearfully berated myself for having the world's most idiotic idea.  Determination won out in the end, and we hit our goal of 150 ounces (the standard donation minimum for milk banks) yesterday  afternoon.

( lactating mama TMI )


We decided to start "lazy weaning" last night, and already my supply is slowly starting to diminish.  My breasts (which are HUGE - to us anyway - and have been christened "The Rental Rack")  will return to their regularly scheduled program of doing nothing but uselessly filling up a bra.  I find myself relieved, sad, clinging to the last physical link I have to my pregnacy.The process of handing over the bags of milk crowding our freezer will be easy, because I know that life goes on and my milk will help another wee life thrive.  The hard part will be saying goodbye to the nourishment that was meant to be for our son, who never got the chance to even fight for survival outside the womb.

I just found out this morning that the milk recipient baby was born yesterday afternoon.  I've been trading emails with the adoptive mother pretty regularly and I am so excited for her newly expanded family. She and her husband didn't make the decision to adopt on a whim and we of course empathize with any possible fertility issues that led to their ultimately happy outcome.  None of that lessens our loss a single bit, but it does help lessen the anger at the universe for insisting that life, and time, keeps moving forward.  It helps a very little bit.  But it's what we have, so it's what we'll take.  Tomorrow we'll start looking for other reasons to practice getting out of bed.

Today was our postpartum visit to make sure that everything is healing as it should after the birth.  The girl at the front desk was checking me in, and upon seeing my appointment in the calendar, looked up with a wide grin and said "You just had a baby?!"  I murmured that he was born at 21 weeks.  She asked how he was doing and I responded blankly "He passed."  Her face slackened and she whispered her apologies. 

They really should put notes in the appointment calendar so that the staff knows these things.  I would have hated to be the receptionist; she looked over either consolingly or guiltily (both?) as I sat in the waiting room fighting back tears.  The OB clinic is on the same floor as a pediatric clinic, so there were babies everywhere.  And of course I was visiting the OB clinic, complete with pregnant ladies radiantly streaming in and out. 

Two weeks ago, I looked that happy.  I waddled. 

The results of the battery of tests they performed aren't all back yet, but the preliminary results are exactly what I was fearing.  So far, they can't tell a damn thing.  The only consolation is that they didn't find any sign of infection on the placenta.  If there had been an infection, there would be no way for them to test for that in the future; no way to treat.  If there had been an infection, I don't know if I could even consider a need for them to test in the future.

The first time that Ian and I ever stepped into that clinic was the day we went in for our first prenatal appointment.  They did a vaginal ultrasound to confirm gestation because I needed to get additional tests and meet with a genetic counselor due to my ADVANCED MATERNAL AGE!!  I was 9 weeks, 4 days.  Ian and I saw the baby fling his arms and legs out.  We got a great "Hi Mom!" shot with all his measurements.  The next one was "Hey Dad!" and the baby gave Ian a giant chin flick.  We laughed, and said "And so, it begins."   They said that my due date was Jan 30, 2010. Probably, we only barely didn't cry.

We didn't have very many appointments, but every time we went to the clinic, we went filled with unbridled hope.  Ian came to every appointment.  They checked "yes" on the box that asked if the baby's father was supportive of the pregnancy.  Of course he was supportive.  The look of Christmas wonder on his face every time we heard the heartbeat  or had another ultrasound said it better than I ever could.

The last quiet hope that Ian and I have been sharing since we lost the baby is that somehow we would learn something from his loss.  We would find some reason for what had happened.  The perinatologist we saw on the day of Christopher Robin's birth, the one that initially confirmed that his tiny heart had stopped beating, was the one to order the lab to draw a bucketful of blood vials.  She impressed us with her kindness and straightforward demeanor; she has us confident that we will find some answers ... eventually.  We've spent the last eleven days waiting for and fearing the day when they'd tell us what they had found.  Today is not that day.

Yesterday was supposed to be my next regular prenatal checkup.  Nothing fancy; just get my weight and blood pressure.  Just check my pee for anything gross.  And finally listen to the baby's heartbeat once again.  Yesterday was supposed to be another day of going to the clinic filled with hope.    Instead we went in today filled partway with a mixture of anguish, questions, and nothing at all.  We left with our anguish, no answers and even more of this stupid, brutal empty.

The reality of what has happened penetrates inch by onerous inch.  I've found myself trying to get out of bed in the middle of the night by rolling over and pushing myself up to maneuver a belly that just doesn't exist anymore.  At the store the other day, I almost picked up a baby food cookbook.   When I realized the implications, I cursed and Ian had to steer me out of the cookbook aisle.  I worried the pages of the diabetic cookbook that I'd picked up so I could learn how to better cook for Mom and focused on two of my four daily tasks: breathing and walking.  Just When I Needed You Most came on overhead and I was suddenly filled with sorrow and malice.  Why do they even play these idiotic, depressing songs in public?  Having a song bring you to tears is acceptable, even in the Fred Meyer, but can't it be a song worth crying for?  I almost threw the book down and walked out of the store.  I wanted to scream and fall to my knees n front of the shredded cheese and tear out my hair.  Instead, I picked out eggs, walked and breathed. 

I took a shower at the hospital right after delivering Christopher Robin's placenta, and just concentrated on getting the blood off me.  When I got home, I avoided taking a shower like the plague.  When I was pregnant, showers or baths were my special time with the baby and my belly.  As I grew larger, I'd spend more and more time running my soapy hands over the space where he stretched and kicked and somersaulted.  I'd sing to him and he'd kick me in the bladder.  I'd tell him that if I peed in the shower, it would be all his fault.  Since the delivery, well, showers have become an every day reality check requiring a combination of willpower and numbness.  I'm far better at numbness.

Last week Thursday we went to the funeral home down the street to make arrangements for his cremation.  The business arrangement of what to do now that the hope of our small son has been taken away was surreal, to say the least.  Why do funeral homes always have the most godawful carpet, Ian and I asked one another as we sat on the floor in the cremation urn display room.  Is it to reinforce the feeling of being in an alternate reality? 

We chose a starfish shaped urn for the teaspoon of ashes that our son will become some time this week.  We squeezed in our hands a beautiful red blanket from Project Linus that they will wrap him in for the cremation.  We touched it with overt purpose, knowing that it would be the last thing to touch Christopher Robin's body. 

We got the pictures from the photographer on Saturday.  I was terrified of looking at them, because I knew that they were all the images we'd have.  We had no photos of holding him on the day after his birth, when his jaw had slackened and his forehead began to wrinkle so that he looked like he was throwing a nice, long fit.  No video of Ian bouncing the baby to soothe him.  No photos of Christopher Robin's sheer muscle mass.  He was a strong boy.  It's no wonder that I could feel him kicking and moving by fourteen weeks.  The short moments that our photographer was with us only captured a small sliver of anything.  Did he get photos of the baby's biceps, or do I have to rely only on my memory? 

After cooking and eating and cleaning up the kitchen far better than we ever would on any other day, we finally got into bed with my laptop and some handkerchiefs.  I am grateful to the photographer and to the entire service that exists to give parents like us at least some small memento.  I feel so fortunate that I have something.  But there are no photos of his biceps.  Or his broad shoulders.  There are no photos of Ian holding the baby the next day in the sunlight, bouncing and saying "shh" in a low, quiet voice because it looked like his son was crying, and he was, too soon, being a father. 

The first person to bring up wearing a sport bra after Christopher Robin's delivery to discourage milk production was our perinatologist.  As soon as she said it, however, I was thinking about breast milk donation and wondering how much it would cost to rent a good Medela for a couple of months.  I brought it up with Ian to make sure that having my body go through the motions of making milk for a baby that wasn't ours was going to be okay for him to handle, and we decided to leave it up to my milk supply.  If it came in, I would pump what I could and see if we'd get enough for donation. 

( lactating mama TMI )


I'll admit that I am trying really hard to be a good person to fight the insatiable guilt that makes me hate myself for losing my baby, and for talking Ian into making a baby with me that my body couldn't carry after all. If I can turn Christopher Robin's loss into something positive and help a baby in need, I've got to give it a shot.   And selfishly, this is something that is helping me continue taking care of myself as well as I was when I was pregnant.  Physically, anyway.  Otherwise, I'd find myself drowning in the bottom of a bottle of tequila, and my life would really go sideways then.

Well, the darkest and most likely outcome bore its fruit yesterday and the perinatologist confirmed that the baby's heart had stopped beating.  Official cause of death was cord compression due to lack of fluid.  We had two choices after that: induction of labor followed by vaginal delivery of our dead son or a surgical removal of the fetus, which would have cut the baby and his placenta to pieces.  We opted for the vaginal delivery of course, and headed to OB Triage.  They didn't have a room ready for us yet so we left the hospital, picked up Jonas from school and headed home to have a moment together.  Mom was back at the house, cleaning the place up in frantic anticipation of visitors throughout the bedrest required for the remainder of my continued pregnancy.  Hope springs eternal we all know, even when we understand that it's all for naught.

We took some time to be together, and to process the baby's passing somewhere other than the hospital.  I went to the bathroom and looked at myself long and hard in the mirror.  "Okay, let's go do this," I said.  Within moments, my contractions started up again in earnest.  These were different from the merely uncomfortable ones I was having all Wednesday night; intense, painful and close together.  We left Jonas in Grandma's capable hands and began the drive back down to the hospital, this time knowing exactly what sorrow would be waiting.

We got settled into our labor room sometime around four.  The doctor was planning on giving me some specific medication to induce labor, but I was already dilated to four centimeters, seventy five percent effaced.  Labor progressed at its own damn pace, but once we got to the actual pushing part of the show, everything went quickly. 

Christopher Robin Kealakaiolohia Cote was born Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 9:48pm.  He weighed 1 pound, four ounces and was twelve and a half inches long.  Big for his gestation of 21 weeks, but we expected that.  Ian's middle name is Christopher, and my older brother Robin was stillborn.  We never would have dreamed of giving a viable or living baby my stillborn brother's name, but under the circumstances, it seemed very right.  

We were able to hold him right away and a volunteer professional photographer from a wonderful non-profit service for greiving families was called in to take pictures.  The nurse was able to not only get footprints, but was able to get plaster cast impressions of his giant tiny feet for our memory box. 

We were discharged today at around 2, after getting to hold Christopher Robin for another hour or so.  The nurses and doctors were all so supportive, encouraging us to stay as long as we liked to say goodbye.  After awhile we forced ourselves to give him back, where they'll keep him until we make arrangements for a funeral home to pick him up.  We're opting for a cremation and are looking at some cremation jewelry so that we can always keep him close.  Whatever doesn't fit into a keepsake will be scattered in the Puget Sound after the wedding when family is around.  We'll plan a trip out on the boat and have a small ceremony of sorts. 

As of this second, Ian and I are doing "okay."  We're parents greiving the loss of a very beloved child, and are riding the emotional tilt-a-whirl that comes with it.  But we're trying to stay positive and hold on to every cherished second of Christopher Robin's short life within me.  It was a magical, wonderful time of our lives with a lot to cherish.  In all our grief, it is very hard for us to not remember how fortunate we actually are. 

We've been told a million times that we'll just have to try again, or that things will turn out better next time, but those words are hollow and irrational to us right now.  I don't want to try again - I want to go back in time and find some way to prevent this from happening.  I don't want just any baby, I want this one.  And trying again just goes againt the whole philosophy of procreation that Ian and I share.  We never tried for Christopher Robin, we just let him happen if he wanted to.  And what do you know, I got pregnant in record time.  I don't want trying to make a baby take over our lives, I want it to happen as a result of the love and life that Ian and I already share.  Besides, we've got a lot to process here, and thinking about making a replacement for our son feels too much like getting involved in a bad rebound relationship.  Christopher Robin deserves to be properly grieved and remembered, and any future children that we may someday have deserve to be welcomed into our family for their own sake, not because we were trying to hold on to their dead brother.

My water broke yesterday at 21 weeks; far too early for a fetus to really be viable.  We stayed overnight in the hospital and got sent home this morning because labor didn't progress and I'm not showing signs of infection so far.  We've got an appointment with a perinatologist tomorrow afternoon where we'll see if there is any amniotic fluid in the placenta.  If there is any fluid, that may mean that the placenta could be sealing itself, and we'll have to play it by ear day by day with me on bedrest until the actual onset of labor, which could occur at any time. 

This is an extreme long shot since there was no fluid left at all last night and it seems to have been not just a leak, but a pretty severe rupture. The more likely and devastating reality is that there will be no amniotic fluid in the placenta tomorrow and we will be left to decide whether we want to come home and let labor begin naturally or get admitted and induce labor and deliver tomorrow.  The almost guaranteed outcome of either of those options is making the choice of what to do with the baby's remains. 

So far my contractions have all but stopped, which is a positive, but fetal movement is fleeting, which is a heartbreaking negative.  The baby had been excessively active for weeks and not feeling him except for tiny moments when I have to question whether it was him or gas is ... fucked up.  I am one of those crazy people that revels in being pregnant, and this is two for two that I've had my chance to carry to term taken away. I am unbelievably fortunate to have a nine year-old NICU graduate born at 26 weeks gestation and I feel pretty confident in the capabilities of modern neonatal care.  However, the weeks between 21 and 26, or even 24, are the critical ones, and we're preparing ourselves for the worst while  trying to stay positive and focus on getting through the night and to tomorrow's appointment. 

The sliver of hope is small and fleeting, but Ian and I are determined to let our son fight the good fight.  If he can MacGyver his placenta back together somehow and we see some accumulation of amniotic fluid in tomorrow's ultrasound and I continue to remain infection free, I will keep my ass on bedrest and let him fight.  We'll know more tomorrow and are being as realistic as possible, while still being hopeful enough to at least ask for and listen to any options that the professionals have to offer before making the best decision for our family.  But these are decisions that I keep telling myself that nobody should ever have to make.

21 weeks and man, are they going fast.  Pregnancy always seems like such a long period of time in theory, but all of a sudden we're over the halfway point and CRAP where the hell are we going to put this thing when it gets here?!  Our house is plenty big enough, but the space isn't at all laid out for an amorous couple, a ten year old spastic case and a squawking  infant.  Add to that the awesome timing of trying to toilet train the baby when Jonas hits his teen years, and the remodeling of our decommissioned basement bathroom gets moved a bit higher up the list of house projects, suddenly ranking higher than the kegerator.

The sacrifices that parents make for our children... we really should get a bigger tax credit for it.

The pregnancy itself is trucking right along.  The baby is extremely active, bashing the crap out of anything he can get its hands, feet and head on, and apparently rehearsing for his role in the revival of Cats.  It's mostly fun and exciting, but the baby's a night owl so I often have the strangest, most vivid dreams.  Ian's a giant douchebag and I'm (still) a giant pregnant lady in a lot of my dreams, so he's been forewarned that one day soon I may wake up incoherently blaming him for doing something absolutely idiotic.
( Welcome to Dreamland )

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, Ian is about as supportive and wonderful as you'd expect him to be.  He's always been the ideal partner, but now that the stakes (and my fundal measurement, har har) are higher, he's been totally bowling me over with just how kind and attentive he can be.  Oh sure, he's still a total boy and can be a big fat dummy when he's not paying attention, but the other 99% of the time, he's amazing.  He'll slather me up with lotion all over my back and my belly so that I don't itch like crazy and we can pretend that it will help me minimize the impending stretch marks from carrying his gigantic offspring.  And he'll sit there with the lotion in his hand until it warms up because he's a better person that I am and actually thinks about not just jizzing a glop of cold Aveeno straight out of the pump and onto another person's skin.  For this miracle of kindness, I let him (sort of) get away with showing me the world's  most disgusting hand puppet.  I am just that kind of woman. 

Otherwise, I'm doing really well.  I'm still taking in group training sessions twice a week, which is totally saving my bacon.  I've been crashing my sister's roller derby circuit training class for almost two years now and have been going to another class with the same trainer once a week for about a year.  The trainer has been phenomenal throughout my pregnancy, and I can't even imagine how crappy I'd feel if I wasn't  able to go. I'm not a very self motivated exercise person, so having Amy boss me around has kept me from totally falling apart during this pregnancy.  It only really does so much, though, 'cause I still feel like March of the Fricking Penguins.  And I've still got a lot of heiffering up left to do. 

I'm trying to stay positive and not stress about a repeat of Jonas' premature birth.  It's a challenge though, I must admit.  I've started writing about it  so that I can get all my thoughts in order and hopefully process my feelings instead of just retaining them.  But it's a difficult subject to write about because even though everything worked out just fine with Jonas, it was mind-bogglingly frightening, and the circumstances surrounding his birth wound up completely altering the trajectory of my life.  Of course that change wound up being for the absolute best, but it wasn't at all pleasant to live through.  I'm in a much better place in every way imaginable now and I keep telling myself that this makes all the difference so that I don't get caught up in a spiral of worry.  It's trickier sometimes more than others, but overall I'm doing really well.

Also, I want ham and corn chowder. Like, right now.

The End.

On Wednesday night Jonas asked us to pause the move we were watching, which always means he has to go to the bathroom and fart.  Getting him to go to the bathroom to do that rather than just farting right on me has been an ordeal so Ian and I were both feeling pretty victorious.  Imagine my pride and adoration when my son ran into the bathroom, shut the door behind him and yelled "Fire in the hole!"

"Don't go in there," he warned when he came back to the living room. 

Nine year old boys are the apple of every mother's eye. So you can only imagine my chagrin and elation when I saw the boy junk on the ultrasound monitor yesterday.  The ultrasound tech said she couldn't tell at first, but she kept sliding the image over what I definitely thought was an outie.  The baby was being pretty spastic and we didn't have a great ultrasound tech so we got crap pictures, which is disappointing.    BUT!  The baby is doing fine and I'm feeling pretty good, aside from the whole getting my body stretched from the inside out thing.  Very exciting.

Halfway there now, bitches.  Let the party begin.
(And now I get my sorry ass to bed at 10:30 on a frickin Friday night.  I am so badass....)

A used bookstore in our neighborhood recently closed down (stupid recession) and on their final day of business, Ian and I picked up a brown paper grocery bag filled with books for ten bucks.  The shelves were pretty barren by that point, but we still spent quite a bit of time wandering around, trying to find the best of the last day dregs.  The only book that was already on my list was a VC Andrews gem with the old keyhole cover, and that was only sort of on a list if I could find it for next to nothing.  (Don't judge.)  I'd been needing some books to  read lately so this was a definite win.  I usually relax by reading in the tub, and with having my entire fricking midsection stretched out with only more to come, I've been taking a lot of baths as of late.   While I sit in the water and swell to 600% my original size like a Grow Your Own Pregnant Lady, I'll be able to take a gander at:

Waking the Dead
The Evolution of Jane
What the Scarecrow Said
"The Natural Inferiority of Women" - Outrageous Pronouncements by Misguided Males
The Women of Brewster Place
Elephant Destiny
Grass Roof, Tin Roof
Sorrow Floats
The Price of a Child
The Complete Guide to Uninvited Advice on Raising Children
Chicks in Chainmail (okay so Ian actually got this one with the intention of giving it to my brother)
Down With Love

Ian picked up his fair share of random crap, and we also scored some great titles for Jonas.  I was already out of bookshelf space before our little foray, but what the hell. 

We've got quite an active space alien on our hands, it seems! Ian and Jonas have both been able to feel the baby kick, and I am constantly feeling it move around. Things were quiet on Saturday and part of Friday, so I started to get worried despite my better judgment. But starting early Sunday morning I got what for all day long, so we're back to normal. Well, whatever that means nowadays.

Also, I am getting HUGE already.  Holy crap!  I went in to see the nurse a because I was having some cramping and was worried.  When she walked in she said "Look at you, so big already!"  It was meant as a compliment, of course, but all I wanted right then was to get that Wide Load sticker slapped to my ass and then waddle the hell on out of there.  The nurse checked the size of my uterus and said that it's "a really, really good sized baby" and then told me again how ENORMOUS I was.  That was three weeks ago!  And over this past week, I've definitely pooched out more.  Hooray?

We go in next week Thursday to get our anatomy ultrasound, where they'll be able to tell us just how freakishly large the fruit of Ian's loins is and check to see if the baby has an inny or an outy - unless it's being modest.  I do not expect this to be the case, however, as it is our baby.  If we can't tell if the baby is a boy and a girl, it won't be because the kid was shy, let me tell ya.  It will be because it couldn't keep its hand out of its no pants long enough for us to get a good peek at  its goods.  I am cooking a very large, very spastic pervert, I just know it.

Dear Diary;

Ok.  I am 15 weeks, 4 days.  First trimester, don't let the door hit you in the ass, yada yada.  Sweet holy hellchrist, being pregnant at 34 is a thousand percent different from being pregnant at 24.  Yes, obvious, but there's knowing something and then there's KNOWING something.  Eating is one of life's greater joys, and I missed it terribly during those long, long weeks. 

We had a checkup today and got to hear the baby's heart again.  LOTS of noise going on in there other than the heartbeat.  Ian was going to say "Good God, woman, you're gassy today" but then realized that it was probably the baby moving around in there.  The doctor confirmed that, and I was pretty happy to have him hear how much the space alien does move around.  I've been able to feel "her" for a couple of weeks already, and the movement has been especially spastic over the past few days.  It'll be awhile before he can feel the baby kick, so it was really cool that he could hear how active his alien is.  I'm not making this crap up, mister!

We go in for the anatomy scan ultrasound next month so will actually find out if the baby has an inny or an outy then.  For now, we indiscriminately switch back and forth between calling the baby he or she boy or girl pronouns, just 'cause.

Also, we stil have a frickin wedding to plan.  The rest of the year is going to go by even faster than the first part did!  Crap!!!

Ian and I had been tossing around the idea of kids for a couple of years now.  We discussed it off an on for pretty much our entire relationship, mostly because I knew that I wasn't sure if I wanted to be done having kids or not, and I thought it was really important that I let Ian know that.  I was also pretty certain that he was dead set against having kids, so I kept wanting to find out if this was actually the case sooner rather than later, because I didn't want to talk about getting married or anything like that if we were decidedly on different sides of the fence regarding children.  Turns out, we were both avid fence hoppers, only truly agreeing when we met in the middle of that big, scary subject of PROCREATING. 

( Two Years of Talking )

Eventually, the skinny boiled down to this: Ian was pretty freaked out, and I felt completely zen.  We were literally trying to wrap our heads about the possibility of making a baby right then and there.  And either in my wisdom or in my stupidity, I took a breath and told him all the things that made me feel so right about this.

"I don't want to try and make a baby," I told him.  "I don't ever want that to take over our lives.  It may never happen for us, and if that's how life is going to be, then it's a good life, and I'm happy.  And if we make a baby, I want it to be because we were making love and enjoying one another, and having exactly the relationship that we have right now."

If we had a baby, I thought, I wanted it to be because we let it happen, not because we made it happen.

I also reminded him that yes, I do know that neither one of us are really "baby" people.  But if we have a baby, it wouldn't stay a baby for very long at all.  Neither would it stay a toddler, or a school ager or a teenager or even in our house.  What it would stay, and what it would always be would be family.  Our family.  Family that we would be able to reach out to in 40 years when we were faced with some medical crisis and they would love us, and we would love them.

"What if you weren't able to be there for your dad right now?" I asked him.  "Yeah, I know he has friends and other people he can call.  But he's calling you.  And you are talking to him for however long it takes.  What if you weren't here because he didn't want to have a baby?"

That's a little shortsighted.

We looked at one another for awhile.  Ian smiled.

"Have you ever considered a career in law?"  he asked.  And then he kissed me like he meant it. 

That was at the end of March.  By the end of May, we were expecting.  And we are both very, very excited.

Testing 1, 2, 3 *or* Proof Positive

Dear Diary;

Sorry it's been so long since I've written.  I missed you!  Boy have I got a secret to tell.