Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sunday
You know what's awesome about having a childless couple over for supper? Someone else to play freeze tag with the Kraken so the Minotaur and I don't have to. Good times.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Here I am again
Forgive me, internets, for I have slacked. It has been almost five months since my last posting. To some extent, this is due to my discovery of the wonderfully entertaining Facebook, where I have been spending most of my online time catching up with people I went to school with in the first grade, and discovering that one of my former clients is quite good friends with one of my former um.........friends. Eeeps. Heheheheheh.
Another main benefit of Facebook is that the avenues for self-expression are more restricted than blogging, so it's the perfect medium for letting people know how well I know 80's horror flick storylines and what I made for supper the night before. But, going on endlessly about the one topic that's eaten my life whole like a peckish boa constrictor for the past year and a half? Not so much.
If anyone still has this blog in their newsfeed, you will remember that in 2008 I suffered three miscarriages, four babies in total. Towards the end of the-year-that-will-live-on-in-infamy, it was discovered that I have a clotting disorder that is in all likelihood the cause of all the misery. And now, my daughter's pediatrician has informed me that it is also probably the cause of the severe anemia that put the Kraken in the NICU for the first day of her life, and almost required a complete blood transfusion on her four week old body. There's one that will make it hard to breathe for a minute. A little more clotting in that umbilical cord, and I would not have my daughter.
As you might imagine, spending a year in and out of pregnancies, wincing every time you go to the bathroom for fear of that telltale swipe of blood on the toilet paper that tells the story of the misery to come, doesn't really lend itself to thinking about anything else. Talking about anything else. BLOGGING about anything else. Every post was an update on the most recent pregnancy, or pregnancy loss. I started to feel like the hamster in the wheel - running, running, running, but getting nowhere fast. I gave up the blog, I thought for good, because it was one more place for me to completely shut out the rest of my life. My life was suffering. My daughter was suffering, living with a mother who burst into tears at Target, or the dinner table, or in the car.
From that fact that I am, in fact, posting, some of you may be beginning to wonder if I have finally succeeded where I have previously failed. The answer is, I don't know. This is our fifth month of trying to conceive again. I am taking prenatals, an additional folic acid supplement, low-dose aspirin therapy, and progesterone. I am on day 23 of a normally 29 day cycle. Too early to test, but late enough for those annoying symptoms that are common to early pregnancy (hopes UP, hopes UP!) and PMS (crap, shit, fuck, dammit, hell). This is my least favorite part, and the time I am most likely to obsess about the maybes and the probablies.
So why am I here? I don't know that either, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the book the Minotaur brought home to me - Mommy Confidential - the memoir comprising the collected blog posts of Mindy Roberts, famous for The Mommy Blog. Fun book, but not always easy to read because she blogs through some seriously tough shit. Divorce, career change, complete emotional meltdown - it's all there. And going through it with her.......I remembered. You know, why I used to blog? The years go by more quickly than summer vacation when you're ten years old and suddenly the Kraken is almost 5, and I am sidling towards 40 with my eyes averted so I won't have to look. I want to remember it. The little details, the inconsequential moments that, when strung together like Christmas lights on a tree, make up our lives. Some of those lights may be burnt out or cracked, and the wires frayed from when the cats chewed the cord half through, but it's all part of the show.
I want to be part of my own life again, no matter what else is to come in this next round of spin the baby wheel. It's a life that has a lot of good things in it, and I WANT TO REMEMBER.
Another main benefit of Facebook is that the avenues for self-expression are more restricted than blogging, so it's the perfect medium for letting people know how well I know 80's horror flick storylines and what I made for supper the night before. But, going on endlessly about the one topic that's eaten my life whole like a peckish boa constrictor for the past year and a half? Not so much.
If anyone still has this blog in their newsfeed, you will remember that in 2008 I suffered three miscarriages, four babies in total. Towards the end of the-year-that-will-live-on-in-infamy, it was discovered that I have a clotting disorder that is in all likelihood the cause of all the misery. And now, my daughter's pediatrician has informed me that it is also probably the cause of the severe anemia that put the Kraken in the NICU for the first day of her life, and almost required a complete blood transfusion on her four week old body. There's one that will make it hard to breathe for a minute. A little more clotting in that umbilical cord, and I would not have my daughter.
As you might imagine, spending a year in and out of pregnancies, wincing every time you go to the bathroom for fear of that telltale swipe of blood on the toilet paper that tells the story of the misery to come, doesn't really lend itself to thinking about anything else. Talking about anything else. BLOGGING about anything else. Every post was an update on the most recent pregnancy, or pregnancy loss. I started to feel like the hamster in the wheel - running, running, running, but getting nowhere fast. I gave up the blog, I thought for good, because it was one more place for me to completely shut out the rest of my life. My life was suffering. My daughter was suffering, living with a mother who burst into tears at Target, or the dinner table, or in the car.
From that fact that I am, in fact, posting, some of you may be beginning to wonder if I have finally succeeded where I have previously failed. The answer is, I don't know. This is our fifth month of trying to conceive again. I am taking prenatals, an additional folic acid supplement, low-dose aspirin therapy, and progesterone. I am on day 23 of a normally 29 day cycle. Too early to test, but late enough for those annoying symptoms that are common to early pregnancy (hopes UP, hopes UP!) and PMS (crap, shit, fuck, dammit, hell). This is my least favorite part, and the time I am most likely to obsess about the maybes and the probablies.
So why am I here? I don't know that either, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the book the Minotaur brought home to me - Mommy Confidential - the memoir comprising the collected blog posts of Mindy Roberts, famous for The Mommy Blog. Fun book, but not always easy to read because she blogs through some seriously tough shit. Divorce, career change, complete emotional meltdown - it's all there. And going through it with her.......I remembered. You know, why I used to blog? The years go by more quickly than summer vacation when you're ten years old and suddenly the Kraken is almost 5, and I am sidling towards 40 with my eyes averted so I won't have to look. I want to remember it. The little details, the inconsequential moments that, when strung together like Christmas lights on a tree, make up our lives. Some of those lights may be burnt out or cracked, and the wires frayed from when the cats chewed the cord half through, but it's all part of the show.
I want to be part of my own life again, no matter what else is to come in this next round of spin the baby wheel. It's a life that has a lot of good things in it, and I WANT TO REMEMBER.
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