27 weeks, 3 days.

When we said her name at the doctor's office this morning she turned her face toward us.

Jason, the ultrasound tech, and I kept our eyes fixated on the screen, all of us repeating her name. With each "Adelyn" it became clearer that she could hear us, her mom, her dad, speaking to her. She opened and closed her eyes and her mouth, kicked her bony arms against the wall holding her in, looking desperate to get out, to stretch out and be free. Three more months--I hope--and she will be.

Getting ultrasounds has been by far the most amazing and strangest part of this pregnancy. Feeling her move is significant, yes, but watching a tiny hand push against your uterus while you feel that bump under your skin is entirely different story.

And each time we go, I feel that familiar sense of worry and panic. Growing up with a malfunctioning body will do that to you--make you distrust your insides. And being pregnant is the ultimate test of letting go of control. Your body is doing all the work. Your body is growing those bones and that heart and that liver and those lips and eyes, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it but wait.

My malfunctioning body has defied my expectations over and over with this pregnancy. Not only is Adelyn growing just fine--the main concern for patients' with Crohn's disease--she's big. Two pounds, 11 ounces at 27 weeks. That puts her in the 78th percentile for her size. Even though ultrasounds usually make every body part look like pure bone--often lacking flesh--I saw a glimpse of chub on her still miniscule cheeks. She's perfect. And judging by one of our ultrasound pictures, she's already giving Angelina Jolie a run for her pouty-lipped money.

Read more...

Proof

Watching my belly has become one of my favorite ways to pass the time. Transformers has nothing on the shape-shifting that's been going on recently.

While I took these pictures, she moved from exceptionally high to low, from the right and then to the left, pushing the edges of my belly along with her. And then I felt my pants get a little bit tighter, all in the span of five minutes.

Read more...

Life post-job.

I am now officially off the schedule at my job. I'm still technically an employee, only I'm now an "on-call" producer. My boss really, really didn't want me to quit, and this way, after I give birth and feel ready/decide to return I can do so easily and without having to sign any papers.

So that means for the past five days I have gone to bed at night, with my fiance by my side, without sunlight boisterously pushing its way through the cracks in my blinds. I wake up in the morning, with my fiance still by my side and the welcome sight of sunlight coming through the blinds. It's been heaven.

It's been so nice, in fact, that it's overshadowed the fact that I suddenly feel so tangibly, irreparably, undeniably PREGNANT. I have to stop to take a breath on my way up the stairs. I moan when I bend down and even louder when I stand back up. Hardly a minute goes by of any day that I'm not stricken with some new ache or pain coming from my baby-making area. I walk around with my hand on my back. The clerk at the gas station, the waiter at the restaurant, the old lady staring me down in line at the grocery store all ask me when I'm due. There's no turning back now.

Jason and I are moving next weekend, so I have very, very, very slowly started the packing process. I figure if I pack two boxes a day until then I can spend D-day drinking hot cocoa and watching the movers do every single ounce of dirty work without feeling the smallest bit of guilt.

The components of Adelyn's nursery are starting to come together. The type A part of me is way too excited about setting everything up. I'm almost salivating at the thought of putting the room together (or maybe it's the promise of the cheeseburger Jason's bringing me on his way home from work in a few minutes).

One more week.

Read more...

Evidence of Life.

After all the aches and pains and weight gain and belly stretching, the one major mark of this pregnancy has become feeling Adelyn move. I wake up and wait for the movement. I sit at work and wait for the movement. I sit on my couch watching TV freaking out when I don't feel movement for ten minutes, and then I sit for ten more simply staring at my stomach, watching the little ripples and strange vibrations take over.

It's both wonderful and weird, and something I doubt I'll ever become totally innured to. There's a human inside of my stomach, and that has still not become easy knowledge. It feels alien.

I've always been scared of feeling real evidence of my body working. If I can hear my heart beating in my chest when I lie down to sleep, I have to switch positions until the thump-thumping goes away. I hate feeling my heart beating. I hate even more when I accidentally touch a spot on my wrist or neck that's on top of some major vein, where I can feel the blood whurring by. I don't sit and marvel at the wonder of life, of the circulatory system, of God--I just get plain freaked out by these things I cannot control. My blood is whurring and my heart is thumping and if it were to stop, there would be nothing I could do about it except stop, too.

I think it's the same fear with feeling Adelyn. The very first time I felt one of those major, deliberate, acute kicks, and felt with my hand the angular shape of her knee, her elbow, her finger or heel--whatever she was jabbing against my stomach at the time--I had the exact same reaction I do to hearing my heart working. I changed positions until I couldn't feel her or see her anymore. Because to feel her so acutely means that she's more than just a thought or an idea-- she's a tangible thing, a human who has a heart beat and a circulatory system that I cannot control. If I can't feel her heart beating, I would never be able to feel it stop beating, either.

Read more...

22 Weeks, 2 Days.

Note the scar from my bowel resection surgery eight years ago. If I have to get a C-Section I'm gonna have all sorts of crazy going on down there.

When I rolled out of bed this morning, I immediately felt different. My body felt somehow heavier. My breath felt more stilted. My underwear felt tighter. And then I looked in the mirror and suddenly looked undeniably pregnant. The quasi-chub, quasi-pregnant phase is over. Gone. Bloat has given way to bulge, and overnight I'm getting those sympathetic looks from strangers in the gas station.

I've been putting off taking pictures of my belly. But I already forgot what I looked like last week, and I figured if I didn't buckle down and face the music now, I'd be in active labor in a hospital bed without a single picture to document the crazy trial that has been the past nine months.

So here goes. The belly.

Read more...

Becoming a mother.

When you find yourself, suddenly, with child--with no preperation at all--it's easy to forget one major thing. After you get done worrying about pregnancy and the fact that your stomach is extending further and further and further without your permission, you still have to worry about being a mother.

My mind is just starting to catch up with my stomach. I've come to grips with the whole labor thing, with the whole expanding midsection thing. I've started to let myself realize that I will soon be responsible for a newborn. I've never even held a newborn. Mine will probably be the first. I've read up on colic and breastfeeding and the pros and cons of different sleeping arrangements. I think I freak Jason out sometimes when I start spouting off facts on co-sleeping or SIDS.

But beyond doing everything in my power to keep the newborn alive, I am going to be a mother. For the rest of my life. Like, someone will call me "mom," not Sarah, and probably be weirded out at some point in his/her life that my real name is, in fact, not "mom."

And once you start thinking about this it opens up an entirely new Pandora's Box of concerns and what-if's and labels and questions. I'm going to have a child. A teenager. An adult. And I never spent a second picturing myself as a mom, or wondering what kind of mother I'll be. I'm starting from scratch.

I feel a lot better about it with Jason as my partner. He--unlike me--is one of the people you just know will be a good parent. Sitting at his show in Memphis last weekend, his extraordinarily drunk friend looked at me, so sincerely, and said "I've always known Jason will be the best dad ever." Like, really? You gave that some thought? Between chugging 24-packs? He said this to me after shouting "Freebird!!!" at the top of his lungs each time a song ended. Jason just has that quality about him.

The only real confidence-booster I have is the example of my mom. Because in my opinion, it literally doesn't get any better. Growing up, I was terrified of disappointing her, yet she was never strict or authoritative. She was my friend and my mother. She didn't kill me when she found beer under my bed, but I still never dreamed of doing it again. (Well, at least in my house. Underage.)

In high school, you meet those kids with the "fun" parents, the ones who throw the parties at their house or who, like one mother I met, brag about their pocket-pipe shaped like a tube of lipstick. That particular mom ended up having an affair with one of her son's high school friends later. Not someone I want to emulate.

My mom somehow struck a perfect balance of "cool" and "mom."

Last night, for example, she made me feel like the old one. I was in my pajamas, in bed. It was 7 at night, already past my 6 o'clock bed time (I wake up at 2am). I get a call from her on my cell, and I reluctantly answer because I was just drifting off to sleep. Giggling, she says, "Come outside in five minutes. And bring Louie." Then she hangs up.

Honestly, I have no idea at this point what's going on. But my mom has never called me out of the blue and asked me to come outside. So I throw on some sweatpants, grab my dog, and head out the door. I don't even put on shoes. Or a bra.

There's a stretch SVU limo parked in front of my apartment. The driver is holding the door open for me. So I cover my chest with my arms (white T-shirt, no bra), and climb into the limo. My mom, her friend Trey, and their younger friend (a few years older than me), all former co-workers of my mom when she was the Executive Director of a succesful Nashville non-profit are sitting inside (she's now the executive director of a homeless shelter. She also has a career I wish I could inherit).

They're dressed to the nines, champaigne in-hand. I'm wearing a see-through shirt. I did not expect to be sitting in a limo that night, or at all in the next decade.

It's the youngest of the three's birthday, and also a celebration that she just graduated with her Master's degree. My mom and Trey decided on a whim to rent a limo to take them to dinner.

So we take a drive around my neighborhood. We talk about the baby, about my burgeoning bump, about the fact that I was in bed at 7 o'clock and my mom is drinking champaigne in a limo. Right before they drop me off, rain starts falling in sheets. The driver doesn't have an umbrella, but I assure him that it's fine, that unlike these ladies I'm just going upstairs and getting back in bed. I say good-bye and make a run for my door, with Louie shivering in my arms.

When I walk back inside, Jason is sitting in the couch with an understandably confused look on his face. I'm soaking wet, so is Louie.

And then, still wet, I get back under the covers and fall asleep, while my mom parties it up with her friends.

That's the kind of mom, I guess, I want to be.

Read more...

Belly.

Update: My go-to I don't want to put on pants pants, the one time crown and glory of my comfy wardrobe, the pants that feel and stretch like pajamas but are just wide-legged and tailored enough to wear in public, officially no longer I fit. I wore them to work last night and realized the second I walked out the door (and I was already late, so no turning back) that I could barely breathe. I spent the rest of work pulling them down and then up, trying to find a point on my middle they could hit without feeling like death.

I still don't think I look pregnant, just like I've eaten one too many Twinkies. Or, since I hate Twinkies, Ramen noodles, because I went on a Ramen noodle rampage yesterday. I won't tell you how many packages I consumed in that 24 hours, but trust me, you should be impressed. My boss did catch me getting out of my chair last night, and for some reason I stood up like all the pregnant women do in the movies, stomach-first, with my hand grasping my back (that damn perineal pain during pregnancy thing is not a joke), and for the first time I saw that awww how adorable, you're pregnant! look aimed toward me.

I need new pants.

Read more...

Pregnant groupie part two.

Jason and I have been on three vacations in the almost six years we've been together, to Atlanta for my 18th birthday, New Orleans two years later, and Memphis last weekend. I don't know if the majority of the world would consider one night in a hotel in a town that I grew up in that's only three hours away a vacation, but there was a hotel involved and sleep and a break from reality so, yeah, that's a vacation to me. Especially these days.

Those of you with kids are probably rolling your eyes like "just you wait," and I very well might be slapping myself in six-ish months that I even bothered complaining about the need for a vacation before I had a crying infant on my hands, but for now, OH MY GOD that was the most amazing night in a hotel ever.

Jason and I went to dinner the first night we got there with his old roommate and his girlfriend.

Jason and his friend took an obligatory shot of tequila and had two beers. With each first chug the girlfriend and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes, because isn't that just what the girlfriends do? Except I'm not the girl who sits out on the shots. Usually.

The two of them, although not as settled-settled down as Jason and I, are a lot calmer than most of Jason's old friends. They're a couple, they live together, they both have full-time jobs and have moved past the "what happened last night?" phase. So we sat at dinner and talked, and then by eight Jason and I were back in our hotel, I was in my pajamas in the bed, Jason was crawling in next to me, the TV was turned onto Planet Earth, and my eyes were closing--like it or not. So on our one night away from home, in a hotel (I have a strange obsession with staying in hotels--there is literally nothing I look forward to more on trips away from home than the tiny bottles of soap and the room service menus, even if I'm just browsing at them pretending I can afford a $20 breakfast), we fell asleep to Planet Earth around 8:30 at night and slept until 8 the next morning. And we could have hopped in the car and headed home then and I would have been fully satisfied.

But we came for Jason's band, a group of four playing backup for a wannabe country music star from Wisconsin. I'd already heard the band practice, and they're all, including Jason, incredibly talented musicians, but it's not a band for the sake of the band, it's all for the singer. And he's a country music singer from Wisconsin.

Later that morning Jason and I headed to a town about 45 minutes outside of Memphis called Oakland. The band was supposed to play at a Wal-Mart opening, because we live in the South and that's what wannabe country music stars do.

So there I was, sitting by an acoustic set-up in the electronics section of Wal-Mart, watching my incredibly talented fiance play guitar with the Barbie aisle visible behind him. About a dozen people stopped their shopping to sit through the entire performance, dozens more filtered in and out with their shopping carts, most of them wearing pajamas because we were in the middle of a Wal-Mart in the kind of town where Wal-Mart is the main attraction.

Before the "show" started--and, yes, that's a W Jason's signing for the venue.

Later the band played at the Delta Fair in Memphis to a much bigger and less shopping-enthused crowd, and I sat in the front row with the singer's publicist singing along to all the country songs I'd never heard before.

I don't understand country music. There are a few songs I like, but I usually end up really confused by the story and mixing up the tune with another Garth Brooks song because seriously THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME. On the drive to Memphis, Jason played through a CD of their lineup. The song Dust on the Bottle by David Lee Murphy came on, and I sat there guessing out loud what the hell the lyrics were getting at--the song starts with "Creole Williams lived down a dirt road / Made homemade wine like nobody I know / Dropped by one Friday night and said can you help me Creole?" And it just MAKES NO SENSE to me. Who the hell is Creolle Williams? Why does it matter that he makes homemade wine? Who's he asking for help?

And because I'm that clueless about country music traditions and styles, Jason convinced me that the song is about cougars, or Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher kind of pairings. And I believed him for about ten minutes until he cracked up laughing, and left me feeling really stupid but still with no NO IDEA what the song is about.

At dinner the next night I told the band this story, thinking everyone would find it as hilarious as I do, only to be informed by a much less amused by country music band member that, um, it's about marriage? And how could I not get that? It's, like, so obvious? (The chorus: There might be a little dust on the bottle / But don't let it fool ya about what's inside / There might be a little dust on the bottle / It's one of those things that gets sweeter with time--it really, really could be like cougars and no one would know the difference).

Sitting in the audience watching your significant other doing something he loves couldn't be anything but a great time, though. And I had the best, most stress-free two days I've had in months.

Read more...

Planning.

You know all of that blabbering I just did a few days ago about feeling normal? Scratch that.

All of the sudden I have been hit with the worst fatigue yet in this pregnancy. I would assume it's anemia, something that's plagued me since I was a little kid, but my iron levels were actually okay as of two weeks ago. I'll just blame the baby. I. am. so. tired.

Yesterday, on my day off, at six am--which sounds early but isn't so much considering I fell asleep at eight the night before--Jason woke me up by unleashing both of the dogs on the bed, their paws wet from their first morning trip outside. This is something one of us does to the other nearly every morning. There's nothing I love more than watching Louie try to wake up Jason. The routine usually involves a lot of tiny bites on Jason's scalp and frantic licking of his ears and shoulders and neck. When Louie wants you awake, he'll get you awake. Even if it means pulling out a chunk of your hair. It starts with Jason haphazardly swatting him away, and then a few minutes later it's a couple of "Looooouuuie, quit!" and then, finally, he's up, and he's smiling because no matter how annoying it may be in the moment, you eventually give in to the cuteness.

Except for yesterday morning. Louie's wet paws scratching at my face, I opened my eyes and immediately started crying. There was no warning. The tears were just coming, before I had a chance to reason with myself or calm myself down or rationalize a mood swing. I don't know what it was, except that after I dragged myself out of bed, the crying stopped, but I was left with the most intense, heavy fatigue I've ever felt. I knew immediately I had another fever, because of the humming and crazy pressure coming from the inside of my head, and lo and behold--there it was. 100 degrees. So I got back in bed and slept until 2 IN THE AFTERNOON. I'm not even kidding. I don't know if it's the pregnancy, or a sudden onset of anemia, or the fact that I switch sleep schedules every single day. This job is getting to me, and there's no more getting around that. My health is starting to take a toll.

Other than sleep, the past couple of days have been filled with lunch with a friend, plans to have lunch with another friend tomorrow who I haven't seen in months--yay!--and an extraordinarily preemptive baby-registry creation. It took me three hours to create the perfect registry, and I guarantee I will forget the password to the account when the baby shower actually rolls around and start all over from scratch. Good times.

And, more importantly than all of that, Jason has gotten an offer to do a construction job in Austin, Texas for three months, October through December. Our conversations have included little else the past three days. Money-wise, he sort of can't turn it down. It would be stupid of us not to. As far as my job goes, it would only mean leaving about a month earlier than I'd planned, which I don't really mind at all (see aforementioned waking up and crying because of messed up sleep schedule while pregnant). Were I not pregnant, I would go with him in a heartbeat, because I'm always down for an adventure and a change of scenery and a badass furnished townhouse in an exciting city for three months. But thoughts of preterm labor and doctor's visits and my pregnant-need to be crazily close to my parents get in the way. It's a lot to think about, and it's why I haven't written much lately. My mind is full at the moment. I've barely touched on the debate in this last paragraph, so expect more to come. Because I made a baby registry six months early. I will be planning this out from every angle, trust me.

Read more...

Second trimester arrives. Really this time.

I almost smacked BabyCenter.com in the face last week when it told me that, no, I wasn't "officially" in the second trimester until the END of my 13th week, even though my doctor told me otherwise and most of the rest of the Internet did, too. BabyCenter is a bitch. And even though I should have just trusted my doctor, I couldn't get over the nagging feeling that the horrible part wasn't over, cuz BabyCenter and its bitch self said so.

But today-- TODAY-- I am 14 weeks. So BabyCenter can kiss me and my one-third of the way done ass.

The good thing about officially being in the second trimester is that a lot of the more-horrifying symptoms are gone. No more overwhelming nauseau, or sudden crying (yet) or boobs that hurt so bad that I seriously, seriously contemplate the practicality of injecting them with novicaine all over them (is that even possible? Someone should look into that).


But as happy as I am about those things, there's something weird about normal. How can you feel normal when there is a HUMAN growing inside of you? I find myself forgetting all the time. I forgot to take my pre-natal vitamin last night, and I'd been taking them religiously. I forgot to only drink ONE diet coke, and I grabbed another one on my way to work this morning.

See, holy shit, I'm drinking ANOTHER ONE NOW and I didn't even think about it until I just wrote that.

I've been looking at stuff on the internet other than labor stories and pregnancy health info and hormone-infused BabyCenter forum debates, like fashion blogs and political blogs and ohmygod Jezebel! How I've missed you. I've been reading Tropic of Cancer instead of wading through What to Expect. I've been shooting up crack and driving without my seatbelt and letting people use my stomach as a punching bag.

It all feels so good until it hits me that everything has, in fact changed. That just because I'm not vomitting doesn't mean this isn't happening. And then I'm wracked with a ton of guilt and Tropic of Cancer starts to seem less page-turning.

I need to find a happy medium.

And, FYI, I have a really hard time updating on Thursdays and Fridays, because those are my hardcore days at work where I usually work double shifts overnight and spend my off-time during the day doing nothing but SLEEPING.

Read more...

The Second Trimester Begins.

Two days into my second trimester, I can finally, officially report that I woke up feeling like myself.

I didn't want to throw up or go immediately back to sleep. I grabbed a Diet Coke, ate a nutritious breakfast of Zebra cakes and watermelon, sat down in front of The Colbert Report, and went to NewYorkTimes.com first thing instead of BabyCenter.

Anyone who's pregnant can tell you--that's a milestone. That's like being released from demonic possession and finding yourself once again able to think for yourself. And it feels good.

It's been a while since I've written, and that's mostly because there hasn't been a lot to say. I worked every day last week except for overnight Saturday (or Sunday morning), so I spent this week, as usual, trying to desperately schedule in more than four hours of sleep at a time. I met with my gastroenterologist on Thursday at noon, which is also the equivalent of about 3 o'clock in the morning to me, and sat half awake as he talked.

On Saturday, I got home from work at about 10AM. I crawled into bed with Jason and was in a deep sleep by 10:05.

During that sleep, I had another set of pregnancy-induced crazyass dreams. One--and I won't go into too much detail because it's pretty much disgusting and not nearly as nuanced with political references as my Dubya adventure--has stuck with me:

I'm driving to work, up a huge, winding hill, with Louie in my lap. We get into a car accident, and Louie finds himself trapped in the rubble. This magical circus man appears, and he has this big wheel with him, a la The Price is Right, minus the sparkles and Bob Barker:


He tells me that I have to spin the wheel to get Louie out of the rubble. So I'm spinning furiously, and I can see him start to pull himself out the harder I spin. But then it's too late, and he's sinking farther and farther down, and The Circus Man tells me I've lost him. Just as I'm about to fall into a state of deep despair, and only an inch of Louie's ear is left peaking out of the mangled steel, Circus Man changes his mind, and tells me it's not too late and TO SPIN, SPIN! So I spin with all my might, and out comes Louie, and then he's free and I run and scoop him up and shower him with kisses. Except the whole ordeal has taken a toll on my little perfect 5 pound puppy, and he now has only tiny nubs where his legs used to be. But it's all okay, because he's alive and that's all that matters.

And then I drive to work, with Louie and his nub-legs, and everyone at Channel 4 is so amazed by the story that they dedicate all the newscasts to my miracle dog, and Louie is suddenly, overnight the most famous creature in the world.

There's a lot more to that dream, including a world tour with Nubbin Boy and an entire sequence in which the previous scene is switched and Louie has to spin the wheel to get me out of rubble and I wind up with nubs for legs.

So, to make a long story short, I woke up from that dream and made Jason grab the thermometer, because that dream extended far beyond pregnancy insanity and had to be a fever dream, too. And I was right. I had a fever of 100, which isn't inherently a huge deal, but raised body temperatures during pregnancy can lead to birth defects, so Jason and I promptly freaked out.

After some calls to the doctor and a lot of Tylenol, I fell back asleep around 5 in the evening.

And I didn't wake up until 9am the next morning.

I don't even want to count how many hours of sleep that is, but I'm starting to think the fever was just my body's way of saying "Sleep, you crazy person!" because I haven't slept more than 4 hours at a time in about two months. Even on my days off, I find myself waking up in a panic at 1 in the morning because ohmygod why am I not writing the news???

Can you tell this schedule is starting to really, really get to me? Yeah. It really, truly is.

Read more...

Damnit, Massage Envy!

I only have one day off this week. Today. And that hardly constitutes a day off, because I have to work again at midnight, so my day "off" essentially means I get to sleep when the sun goes down and wake when it comes up for ONE NIGHT.

And on my day off, I want a damn massage. My mom was gracious enough to get me a membership to Massage Envy a while back, and I've now skipped two of my monthly paid-for massages because the world is so effing scared of pregnant people.

The last time I went, they said they couldn't do it until I'm 15 weeks, unless my doctor said it was okay.

Well, yesterday I asked my doctor, and she actually laughed in my face.

"Um, yeah, that's perfectly fine, as long as they don't maul you in the uterus."

So, today I called the lovely massage people, and NOW they say they can't do it until I'm 13 weeks, even with my doctor's permission.

I'M 4 DAYS AWAY FROM 13 WEEKS! What the hell is gonna change in these oh-so-important next 4 days?? Will the fetus suddenly become immune to mommy's relaxation?

The masseuse actually told me last time one of the things they can't do to preggos is rub their feet. Because, uh, there's an old wive's tale that rubbing your feet can send you into pre-term labor.

I'm 12 weeks along. At this point, it's not called pre-term labor. It's called a miscarriage. And if rubbing my feet could cause a miscarriage, then sorry, baby, but I went to town on my feet LAST NIGHT because they hurt so stinkin bad.

It's called being pregnant. Your feet hurt, your body aches, you're more tired than usual, more IN NEED OF A MASSAGE, and more irritable.

Rub my damn feet, Massage Envy.

Thanks.

Read more...