hard time of year

Wednesday a year ago we bought the big-ass jeep from a guy up in the Antelope Valley.  We wanted a jeep because I was due in February, and we were afraid of getting snowed in.  I had just hit 20 weeks.  It was all downhill from here.  On the way home J drove the jeep, and I drove my car.  I was still feeling sick.  I had been sick for four or five days.  I was a little worried because I felt weird, but I had never been pregnant before.  I didn't know what pregnant felt like.

On the way home we stopped at Charlie Brown Farms, a place we'd found when we went up to see the poppy reserves for the first time.  J had a burger or chicken sandwich.  I just had a hot chocolate because I wasn't feeling so well.  I listened to music thinking about creating a birthing playlist.  I wanted to have music close to me when I gave birth, and I was starting to organize my music into different types of playlists - the "new age zen" stuff for if I needed to relax, the "upbeat shake your booty" stuff if I needed energy.

The next day it was rainy and cloudy, but I went outside to take pictures of the jeep to send to my dad.  J took the back seats out and hung out in the giant part in back for a while - I read a book while he read the owners manual - and we talked about the camping trips we'd take with our little Baby T.

Then the next day was Friday.  We went out on a Date Night.  I was feeling good.  We went to Carrows.  I wore my maternity jeans, and a red long sleeved tshirt that said "Baby makes the Belly go Round."  I put a sweater on because I was still getting chills.  I went to old navy and bought some long sleeved tshirts and yoga pants because I was going to be headed to England the next week, and I needed some more warm clothes.

Saturday J's friend came over and helped install the ladder up to my girly nook in the attic.  I put up some Halloween decorations.

Sunday I remember because Tony Stewart won the Nascar race in Fontana.  We had tickets to go - there was a deal where, if you bought tickets to the Epicenter rock festival two weeks before, where we saw Blink-182, you got the Nascar tickets free.  We thought about going, but I was a little nervous.  I still wasn't feeling well, and I wanted to get well for my trip to England that Wednesday.  I told J he could go on his own, but he didn't want to.  Tony won.  Tony has been J's favorite driver since before I knew him.  He's never seen him win in person.  He was bummed, and I felt kind of like a killjoy for keeping him from going.  But I brushed it off.  I was pregnant.  There were more important things than Nascar races.

Oh, and J felt the baby kick for the first time that day.  He still isn't positive he felt a kick, but he did.  He says he felt "something" and I know it was a kick.

Monday I still wasn't well, but I started making up a packing list for England.  I told Sandor that I wasn't feeling great and was going to need to rest a lot while I was there.  I did my laundry and rested and drank juice and ate salad.  I remember the juice - Hansen's apple cranberry.  I must have had five gallons of it during the two weeks I was sick.  I can't drink it anymore.  Plus juice is full of sugar, anyway.

Tuesday morning I checked into my flight for the next day, but I was still feeling like crap.  At 11am I told J that I couldn't go to England feeling like this.  If anything happened, I said, I would never be able to forgive myself.

I did a google search to see how you could get out of flights you bought on Priceline, and a bunch of former Priceline workers said that the way to do it was claim you had a miscarriage.  That seemed really obscene to me, so I called them and was just honest.  They let me cancel the trip and just pay a $250 fee.  I wasn't thrilled about the fee, but it was better than simply eating the entire flight.  I told the guy who helped me how I had read on the internet that if you claim to have a miscarriage, Priceline will refund your money.  I told him I couldn't do that because I was 21 weeks pregnant, and that would be a terrible thing.  He said that he hoped karma didn't bite people in the ass who did that.

I called Sandor and Anna Louisa and told them I couldn't come because I was still so sick and was worried.  They were disappointed, but understood.

By 1pm I was feeling bad - backache, gassy, etc.  J was at an AA meeting and I asked him to pick up lunch for us on his way home.  Plus juice.  Always that damned apple cranberry juice.

At 3 I put a chicken in the oven for dinner.

By 4 I was having full on contractions, but didn't know it.  I called the doctor.  He said to come in the next day.

At 5 I realized the pain was coming in waves, like the doctor had asked me an hour before, but I hadn't known then whether it was coming in waves - I just hadn't noticed.  He said to come in right away.

I got dressed and told J we needed to go in.  I was peeing before we left, and my water broke.  Only I didn't know it at the time.  I just knew there was blood.  Lots of it.  And that wasn't good.  The doctor told us to go to the nearest ER.

By 6:30 I was in the hospital room seeing my boy on an ultrasound, still alive and kicking, but not able to live without the fluids.

At 7 J kissed my belly and we said goodbye to Baby T while he was still alive and could hear us.

By midnight it was over.

I ovulated last week.  If I'm pregnant, I'll find out next week sometime.  Even if you time everything right, there's still only a 25% chance each month that a fertilized egg will make it.  So I'm not getting my hopes up that it will take this first month of trying.  And hope isn't even the right word.  After losing two (count 'em, two) babies, I'm not so much hoping to be pregnant.  I'm hoping to have a child, to not have my only experience in the labor and delivery room be when I lost my son; and in order to do that, you need to get pregnant.  And so I will brave being pregnant, with all the fear and angst that goes along with that.

I miss you Baby T.  So much.  Even after a year, I still ache for you.

More of The Artists Way

Ok guys, so I know I've been crappy at blogging lately.  But, you see, there's just been so much living going on in my life, that I'm having a hard time finding the time to blog about it.  Which is a good thing, really.

First off, I joined a choir.  A good choir, not an old-lady-church-choir (no offense to old-lady-church-choirs).  For almost three hours a week I get to bask in the bliss of Vivaldi, and it's awesome.

Second, I'm doing The Artists Way again.  Despite my best efforts, some day I'm going to finish this damn book.  I've had it since 1996.  Seriously.  1996.  But I'm slogging through it.  This week's main task is Reading Deprivation.  No reading all week.  But since the book dates from 1992, before the internet and email was really a big thing, I'm changing the rules a little bit.  The whole point of the exercise is to clear out all the extraneous noise and chatter in your head, and give you room to create something.  Julia Cameron says that many blocked creatives are voracious readers because they use other people's words and creations to numb themselves and distract themselves from what they would really like to create.  That struck a chord with me, since I am a voracious reader myself, and it's probably for those reasons.

But not reading at all?  What about my work email?  And what about my audiobooks on my walk around the lake.  Are they ok?

I found this post with updated rules for the Week 4 task in the 21st Century, and I'm going to try to abide by them.  I'm also going to avoid TV.  I will allow myself my audiobooks while I'm at the lake walking.  I will allow myself work email, but not on a steady stream, the way it generally is now.  I will check it three times a day, and respond then as needed.  I won't waste time on facebook/twitter reading stupid posts conjecturing the status of the Kutcher/Moore relationship.  I will not go to the Huffington Post.  I won't watch The Daily Show.

I will, however, write in my journal, work on my book, and go on my Artist Date.

The only thing I'm worried about is that I'm meant to have Jury Duty on Tuesday.  Ok, so listen, Tuesday has to be a giveaway day for me.  Jury duty trumps Julia Cameron, no?  What would I do if I didn't read?  Sit and talk to people, I guess.  Write.

Good grief.  Ok, I will attempt to do my best to avoid reading this week, even with Jury Duty.  But I have to realign my whole sense of purpose now - I had been looking forward to spending the day reading in a nice quiet spot.  But now I will have to look forward to spending the day talking to new people, looking at the wall, and listening to the voice inside my head.  Maybe I should just write out my inner conversation all day...

I don't know.  We'll see how this goes.  I'm skeptical.