Flare-up.

Most days I can convince myself that I am fine. I've lived with whatever abnormalities I suffer for 13 years--probably more--and therefore can carry on an active, even too busy, lifestyle without batting an eyelash or complaining about a stomachache. I've even mastered the art of discreet bathroom visits. You'd never even know I went, and if you did, you surely wouldn't know that I'd just been 30 minutes before. I'm a master of disguise, and delusion, and lying to myself.

But then there are days like yesterday. And Monday. Sunday. And Saturday. When the second I stand up out of bed I have to run to the bathroom, gripping my stomach, and there's no time for grand delusions or putting on a fake smile.

My obstetrician thinks it could very well just be pressure. Little Adelyn Belle, the soon to be light of my life, pushes against every inch of my bowels each time I stand up, sending mommy-to-be on a stampede to the nearest toilet, usually to just sit there in pain, unable to go, letting reality sink in more and more each time. I have Crohn's Disease. And Ulcerative Colitis. I'm pregnant, and I'm in a flare-up.

For the first time this weekend, I found myself seriously considering the thought that I don't know if I can do this. How can I be a mother, if I can hardly get out of bed? What will Adelyn do while I'm at the doctor, or in the bathroom for the millionth time that day, or god forbid in the hospital, or if I suddenly lose all my confidence and find myself, like I did then, questioning my ability in the first place?

I was put on a new medication yesterday, so hopefully that will help. I've been prescribed iron supplements, because my anemia has come back with a vengeance, so hopefully that will curb the constant fatigue.

I know that when I leave my job in November and am able to--finally--sleep like a normal person, I might feel good as new without any other intervention. My doctors don't seem to want to do too much else unless I find myself in a critical situation, like with an obstruction. Then they'd take the risk of harming Adelyn with surgery, because then they wouldn't have any other choice.

I asked my doctor yesterday--for the first time--what I was going to do after she's born. I've spent so much time praying I can deliver a healthy baby I haven't given a lot of thought to what I'll do once that baby is there, depending on me, needing me to be healthy. And he didn't have a clear cut answer, as doctors never do. I only told him that if I have to get an ostomy, I want to do everything to wait until after my wedding. Because as trivial as it may be in the grand scheme of things, I don't want to wear an ostomy bag with my wedding dress, if it can all be helped. I just don't.

I've developed a huge complex throughout the years with seeming like the sick girl, to the point that I often find myself downplaying my situation to doctors, just because I don't want to complain. I've had a hard time writing this because all it is just one big complaint. But I needed to explain why I haven't written much lately. Because, at the moment, a lot of what comes out of my mouth sounds like whining. And I'd rather just be quiet.

But I woke up this morning feeling a little better, as in I stood up out of bed and walked into the kitchen instead of running to the bathroom. Baby steps.

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Nuchal Translucency Screening

I'm sitting here looking at this picture, examining this child's every fold and black and white crease, the already impressive size of that bottom lip and the uppitiness of the nose, and I can't help but think this is insane.

How does every mother not fall into an existential crisis during pregnancy? That thing up there? IT'S IN MY STOMACH. What? How? Seriously? Are you fucking kidding? I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET IT OUT???

I sat in a mixture of amazement and panic yesterday during the nuchal translucency screening.

A lot of women find themselves inconsolably crying when they get the first extended glimpse of their child.

Each time it hit its little hand out to swat away the ultrasound tech's movement, each time it kicked its legs against my cervix and slid up and then back down the slope, I laughed harder.

It's the same thing that happens when we sit on the couch and watch Louie and Sampson fight over a chew toy for hours on end.

It was bizarre. Amazing. Nerve-wracking. And hilarious.

As for the all the fun health stuff, all the tests have --miraculously-- turned out just fine so far.

I'm sure every pregnant woman has these doubts of anxieties of something going wrong, but let me explain just why the previous statement is so miraculous:

For the last 15 years, I have never once been pleasantly surprised by my body.

To me, doctors' offices and hospitals are sites of terror and pain. Period. You don't walk in those doors and come out smiling.

When I was 10 years old, I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. That came after years of weighing 60 and 70 pounds, of throwing up nightly, of misdiagnoses and confusion.

Next came more than a decade of the same thing, peppered with new diagnoses like Ulcerative Colitis. Severe anemia. Strictures. Osteoperosis at 20 years old--the result of years of forced Prednisone.

To sit in that doctor's office yesterday, to hear the word "negative" repeated over and over again, to walk out of those doors actually smiling--not holding back tears or cursing God or my intestines--felt almost perverse. This isn't the way things are supposed to happen to me.

I have to wait a week for the full result of the down syndrome screening (the combination of the nuchal ultrasound and the blood test), but the measurements so far look, and I quote, "perfect."

All the trisomies--negative.

The baby's size--right on track.

Abnormalities--nadda.

The heartbeat--stronger than normal.

And the results of my own blood test put my iron count right ABOVE the notch I would need an iron prescription.

I just pray that my body doesn't decide to betray me once again.

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How I quit smoking after I found out I was pregnant

For about two days after I got the big fat positive, I was the East Nashville cigarette fairy.

I smoked just one after that fate-filled trip to the bathroom, in an effort to stop the impending panic attack, and then made a decision right then and there that that was it. Like it or not, I was done, and I just had to be.

I took our last remaining pack in my hand, opened my window, and threw it into the street. It just felt so much more symbolic than calmly placing it in my trash can--not to mention that, in my neighborhood, five minutes wouldn't pass before they'd be gleefully scooped up by a wandering homeless man or drunk hipster walking home from the bar.

My fiance agreed to quit, too, a huge undertaking considering his grandpa gave him his first cigarette when he was 11. He'd smoked at least a pack a day since then.

Freaked out by the fact that I had unknowingly been smoking up a storm while pregnant, and drinking, and riding roller coasters, I took to Google, and waited for the words "you and your baby are dying or you're already dead and just don't know it" to pop up.

And then I found a new study claiming that pregnant women who quit smoking before the 15th week of pregnancy reduce all the risks of blowing carcinogens in a fetus' face to that of women who never did it at all (read more about it here).

Armed with that dangerous knowledge, I got in my car the next morning to make the 30-minute drive to Murfreesboro, one usually made with the trustworthy companionship of tobacco, and I found my car turning left instead of right, turning into the gas station instead of the interstate, and then my car door was swinging open, and I was walking toward the gas station, and I was saying thank you to the nice shirtless man holding the door open for me, and then I was asking for a pack of cigarettes and handing over a ten dollar bill and gripping the tiny box in my fingers and tearing off the plastic cover and pulling out the foil and then I was back in my car, with an easy way out of the panic that was pulling at every inch of my body sitting right at my fingertips.

With just one little puff, it could all be gone, I could be making the drive home just like nothing had happened, like I was myself, a smoker, and all would be normal and okay.

And then my phone rang, and it was Jason. His voice was tense and agitated--the voice of someone who'd just quit smoking. And then it hit me.

This was real. I am pregnant. I always said I'd quit when this happened, but that was always an undefined one-day, and it sure as hell wasn't supposed to happen anytime soon.

But the cigarettes are now just an afterthought, and their relief would be nothing compared to the relief I'll feel if I give birth to a healthy baby, and know that I did everything I could to make it that way.

And so I rolled down my window. I threw the cigarettes on the street, watching as the box broke open and the cancer sticks exploded out, rolling this way and that, yards away from where they'd landed the night before.

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