No sooner than the day after L told her boss the big news, did he storm towards me at a company-sponsored happy hour grabbing my hand and exclaiming, loudly (and drunkenly) “CONGRATULATIONS!” This was when I was in the midst of a conversation with a couple of other of his employees.
I couldn’t believe this high level exec would be so tactless after having been explicitly asked for discretion. I mean it’s his job to respect a lot of secrets from a lot of people.
I thanked him and immediately reminded him straight in his ear that nobody else knows so please don’t mention it yet.
The other two employees didn’t say anything, which, in retrospect, is strange. They must have known already, which, if true, indicates another breach of sensitive information Discretion is hard to come by.
At the end of the evening he apologized for not being discreet and I for tamping him down somewhat forcefully. I told him that he is the first outsider that we have told — because it had been affecting L’s job performance — which he was surprised at. And that we don’t want to spread it around just yet because we are still in the danger zone. He said, “I know exactly how you felt… I didn’t believe it myself until my first baby was actually born.”
His outburst alarmed me, but touched me at the same time. L and I haven’t fully accepted it as a foregone conclusion (bocks notwithstanding), and his heartfelt congratulations made it feel more real by another notch.
- P
Today’s symptoms: excessive bloatiness and feeling of burpy gaseousness.
However her girth remains at 32.25″ to 32.75″ inches for now so the feeling is more internal.
Is it the prometrium to blame? It has been known to cause these symptoms.
Otherwise, L has been doing well these last couple of days, eating and sleeping well. Yesterday she made up for all the food she couldn’t keep down the day before. It must be very frustrating being simultaneously starving and nauseous!
Tonight she is doing some heaving by the sink. I told her that the sound of her dry heaving has become music to my ears — it means the hormones are presumably doing their thing, and that all the Love Puke as we call it is apparently correlated with lower chances of m.c.
- P
Yesterday I was surfing my way to success downstairs with L upstairs in her office, staring at her email. Several times I heard a cough from upstairs followed by a rapid pitter patter towards of the bathroom.
(This will be funny in about a year.)
L seems to be highly suggestible. Out with friends or at work, she can hold it together. Engrossed in a social event or silly TV show, she feels good, even for hours. We got a season of Friends on FreeVo… good mindless escapism that keeps the chow down.
But anything talk remotely related to puke management and she starts to lose it. So please, when you are near L, avoid words like “scarf”, “nuke” or “comet”.
- P
L is venturing off to work for on-site meetings, including talking over the plan for getting the work done.
In her lunch bag:
- Goldfish, regular
- Fig Newtons
- Last night’s Ma Po tofu
- Cup-a-Noodle*
Also:
- Pillow, for emergency snoozes in the car
We don’t know how tired she’ll be getting there and back.
- P
(*Cup-a-Noodle, with 1000% of the RDA of NaCl would normally be on the do-no-consume list, but for another 7.5 months L qualifies for what we call “Special Dispensation”)
When we found out L was pregnant we were in my hometown for a big family reunion, staying in a hotel.
It happened to coincide with the date L would be giving blood for her first beta test. Instead, L brought some pee-on-a-stick pregnancy tests.
Those tests are funny, because they’re written in such neutral language. Perhaps they should have two sets of instructions: “If you WANT to be pregnant, read this one.” // “If you are AVOIDING pregnancy, read this one.”
I think the first test was on Wednesday July 2 in the morning. I woke up to L saying, from the bathroom, “Schweeee!” In a peppy, but not ecstatic voice. “Schweee!! It’s positive!”
Me: “Huh? Whu?”
L: “The test is positive!”
Me: “Is it like ovulation predictors, where there’s degrees of interpretation?”
L: “No, if it says positive it definitely is detecting something!”
Of course after all the we’ve been through over the past couple of years, this was a huge surprise. We had mentally moved on from the idea that IVF would work. We were of course hopeful, but jaded at the prospects after so many unhappy phone notifications.
There are still false positives, so we decided to have L wait and test again in 3 days.
In the mean time L was really down in the dumps, something I still don’t quite understand given this extraordinary ray of hope. Maybe she can chime in here and explain.
L took it easy for the next couple of days, avoiding sudden motions and alcohol. She was quite tired and sleeping a lot at night. (Was there nausea at this point?)
Three long days later (was it two?) she tested again.
A big ol’ plus sign. Unmistakable. Positive. POSITIVE!!
I think we still refused to fully buy into the idea. Too dangerous. L would have a blood test when we got back [was that July 11th? Did she have a positive blood test, then an ultrasound on the 18th?]
- P
This seems to stay down: sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf. A week’s worth of nourishment in one brick!
Yesterday’s Twice Tasted Leek Soup has for some reason lost its appeal. So has Twice Tasted English Muffin. Go figure.
- P
This blog may very well serve as a historical record of sorts. So let’s give a sense of what has been going on in the world lately. It’s been a tumultuous decade of change:
- 1998: The worldwide web had only been in popular use for a couple of years. At this point, most people don’t have computers or email. AOL is making a lot of money on housewives racking up hours of dialup modem use doing instant messaging. Yahoo is ascendant; Google just got started. P quit his job last year to start his consulting company.
- 2000: The new millennium came in without the anticipated bang. We partied like it was 1999 (it wasn’t that different from the 1998 edition.)
- 2001: The bang took another 21 months to happen. Seven years ago, 9/11/01 was the attack on the World Trade Centers. This was the “Where were you when…” moment of our generation. The trauma to the country and all of us living here was unimaginable. We were paralyzed for weeks and obsessed over it for years.
- 2002: L and P decided to get serious and make a commitment… by buying a house together.
- 2003: That trauma was exacerbated by an opportunistic war on Iraq that started in 2003, justified by a made-up connection to 9/11. Many Americans wanted to disown their own country. P was in London when the Shock and Awe bombs were dropped. L was home, planning our wedding.
- 2004: We were incredulous that Bush could be re-elected. P had been very politically minded but checked out of American politics at that point.
- The environment has been an issue for decades, but irrefutable (yet nevertheless refuted) evidence of human-caused global warming reached general consciousness from Al Gore’s movie. It started many conversations. Still, it’s not yet hitting close to home.
- It wasn’t until gas prices started ramping up in 2007 and this year that the world got serious about alternative energy. Out: big cars and SUVs and Hummers, incandescent light bulbs. In: compact fluorescent light bulbs. (LED bulbs aren’t ready yet. Out: plastic bags. In: reusable shopping bags.
- One thing that is not spoken of very much is the root cause of all this waste, energy use and CO2 emission, which is the ever-increasing human population. We are at about 6.7 billion people.
- 2008: There is now quite an energy reduction and greening kick going on. It’s in the news daily. Return airfares across the country used to be $350, now they are $500 or $700. Gas is now at $4.50 per gallon when it had been $2.00 a couple of years ago. (I know readers of the future will laugh at that.) Use of mass transit is skyrocketing. American carmakers are on the brink of collapse. Until a year ago they were selling monstrous, profitable SUVs while Toyota perfected the gas-electric hybrid engine and the Prius. Small cars are on their way back — their last visit was in the 70’s during the last oil crisis. Investment in solar technology is through the roof, and the roof is increasingly likely to house a solar panel. Machines and humans are starting to compete for food: Ethanol is artificially subsidized and legislated into use, causing food prices to increase as farm fields are devoted to creating automobile fuel. (Thankfully a backlash has started.) Citizen Al Gore just called for America to be free of foreign oil within 10 years. (Will he be Obama’s energy czar?)
- Speaking of which, we have to bear with the current government adminsitration for only six more months. I think we can make it. Bush has the lowest approval ratings of any US president in history.
- And America is on a path to elect the first black president, something few would have predicted to be possible in our lifetime. He narrowly beat out Hillary Clinton, who might have been the first female president.
- America is still in Iraq, although it’s finally become okay to think ahead about getting out. Osama Bin Laden still has not been found, and the Taliban is rising again in Afghanistan. Pakistan recently became a nuclear state (as did India) and is both an ally and — in the mountainous tribal regions bordering Afghanistan — a nation harboring those responsible for 9/11. Iran and Iraq used to be in a deadlock for power. But with USA weakening Iraq, Iran’s power has multiplied and they are pursuing nukes without recrimination. Israel and Palistine continue to be at irreconcilable war for seventy plus years. Much of the mid-east strife is connected to this. China is hosting the Olympic Games on 8/8/08 (how auspicious). Its wealth and power has been growing immensely.
- The country is in the midst of a liquidity crisis caused by sub-prime mortgages being sold too carelessly to consumers, then chopped up and repackaged as derivatives, concealing the risk in the process.
- Google owns the web. Yahoo is crumbling. Apple’s iPhone came out a year ago and established the future of cellphones and consumer electronics user experiences. HD TVs are slowly replacing regular TVs. The Wii, with its motion-sensing wireless controller is the most popular videogame console (XBox 360 and Playstation 3 are trailing). Cloud computing is just starting to become a reality.
- P
L’s productivity has been in the pits, so she emailed the bosses to break the big news.
They are the first two outsiders to know, other than the doctor.
They responded immediately and were very positive and supportive.
Big relief! And also touching. Things feel like they just became more real by another step.
I have felt for the past several years that L and I have quite a charmed life. We are healthy, wealthy, living in a beautiful part of the world surrounded by more great friends than we have time to see, and we have a solid trusting, loving relationship. Others we know have health problems or relationship problems or other heavy issues. We’ve always had it easy.
Except in the baby-making department. I don’t believe in religion or blessings or curses or any supernatural cause of “luck”. But from an odds standpoint, I felt well statistically something must go wrong at some point.
And now here we are, charmed once again. (bock bock*)
- P
*Aside from an indication of counting (two) chickens before they hatch, “bock bock” is also Chicken for “knock on wood”, or, more correctly, “bock on wood.”
We don’t get another ultrasound for another 12 agonizing days.
In the mean time, small solace can be had from our cool pregnancy book Great Expectations:
Whatever the cause, it does seem as if the nausea and vomiting serve a purpose — the sicker you feel, apparently, the less likely you are to miscarry.
And also:
Your hormone levels and your level of nausea will rise and fall together, and women pregnant with multiples tend to feel more nauseated.
The book continues to tell L’s story better than this blog:
It is not uncommon to have pink or brown discharge at this stage.
Phew.
- P
