Announcement time!

Many of you (I can only ever think of four or five people who read this) already know, but in case you don't...

I'm three months pregnant! I've been journalling all along, but wasn't really ready to share it with more than a handful of people, so here's an excerpt of what's been going through my head. 

12/26: In December, as Christmas approached, I wasn't feeling particularly hopeful about our chances of getting pregnant again. We'd been trying for so long, and with so little luck. In fact, when I got violently ill on late Friday early Saturday, I called the hospital about what I could do for my throat pain (I damaged it vomiting!), and they asked if I was pregnant. I said I didn't know, but that it wasn't likely. 

Christmas Eve was day 28, and although I wasn't having what I thought of as symptoms, I was in a Rite-Aid and I thought strongly about buying a pregnancy test. But no, I thought to myself -- I'd have to wait until Christmas day to be sure not to waste it, and I just couldn't handle that kind of disappointment on Christmas day. 

But on the actual day, we had a long quiet period when I was hungry for something healthy. I went to the grocery store for fruits and vegetables, and given that I still seemed not to be at the end of my cycle, I bought a test. 

At home, I took it, capped it, stood up and washed my hands. I had avoided looking at it, but I thought to myself that I ought to put it somewhere for it to finish out its wait time while I distracted myself with something else. I picked it up and... even though the time wasn't close to over, it clearly had a plus sign. I looked at the package to make sure that a plus sign meant what I thought it meant, that it wasn't some sort of elaborate control line or that I wasn't holding it wrong. But it was positive!

Anyway, I'm excited! I'm terrified! I'm trying not to get too attached, although I know that will be difficult. 

12/31: I'm still quite nervous, and the nervous is outweighing the excitement a bit. Like, I want to go look at cute baby clothes and things, but I haven't even Googled, because I've been busy trying to check my lab results and memorizing the normal range of hCG levels at this stage. 

I feel... kind of normal. Fatigued, for sure. Peeing a lot, but not every 15 minutes or anything. Just more than usual. I remember with Zadie, I was craving sweets like crazy. This time, I can kind of take or leave them. I was also starving, and this time my appetite is normal. I even find that it's reduced a bit at mealtimes. I feel a little hungrier when mealtimes roll around, but then I find my capacity is just a bit reduced. I am, however, fantasizing and daydreaming about food of the very healthy and hearty type. Like, I want cooked greens, chickpeas, black beans, squash, stew, barley, lentils, roasted vegetables... This morning I made kimchee rice with basted eggs for breakfast, and if I hadn't been worried about using another pan, I'd have sauteed some greens to go with it.

1/7: Sweetie says he thinks it's a girl. I don't have a feel for it. Last time I wanted it to be a surprise, but my mom and Sweetie both wanted to know so badly that I gave in. This time, I will definitely want to know. If it's a boy, we need all new baby clothes, and you're not really supposed to have a shower the second time around. I still like the idea of being surprised and hearing "It's a ___," but I'll get over it.

1/11:I had my first ultrasound yesterday. I had to wait a while, because the office was busy, but then my doctor came in and asked a few questions and we got started. I told him in advance, "I've been pretty nervous, so if you feel like making any comforting noises during this, that would be great." He said he'd do his best. The screen was turned so I could see it, and at first it looked like static. But then there were dots. And the mostly-black dot is the little amniotic sac, and inside it was a whitish thing that was flickering rapidly. He said almost immediately, "Oh yeah, there it is. That's looking good." He pointed out where a yolk sac (ew) was forming, and then asked if I saw the flickering. I did, of course, and I already was pretty sure I knew what it was: the heartbeat. He confirmed it, then made a couple measurements on the screen, and I watched them both come up as "6 wks" (which is exactly where we are). As the doctor said, we're not completely out of the woods (most miscairrages happen in the first trimester), but at this point, we're going to treat it like a normal, healthy pregnancy. So my next appointment isn't until February! 

I'm feeling good, and I'm exercising and trying to get a lot of rest. Sweetie has a nickname for the baby: Ant. He thinks it's a girl and would like to name it Antigone. I have known exactly one Antigone, and she was a rather quirky science teacher, so I'm not sold yet. 

1/17: Zadie kissed my stomach in the shower the other day, and she has out of the blue begun to ask Grandma to play "baby sister" with her again, after about a 6 month break. I don't know if it's a coincidence, if she has some sixth sense about it, or if she just has figured it out from the many whispered conversations that have taken place around her, but I don't know if we're going to be able to hold out on telling her as long as I'd thought. We'll see, I guess. I bought her a cute t-shirt that says "Big Sis" on it, and I'm wondering what her reaction will be. Obviously, I'm hoping she's wildly excited, but whenever I get my hopes up like that, her reaction is inevitably, "Oh. Cool." 

Appetite situation is the same. I feel full after eating about half my normal portion. And I'm definitely more queasy/refluxy than usual. That's fine. I didn't have it at all with Z, so it's kind of a new experience. 

I read these updates from pregnancy web sites about the baby's development, and it's just amazing. The kid is making its own blood cells, growing hands and feet, has color to its eyes, etc. And in the last week, it has doubled in size. What a lot of energy that must take!

[Undated, but around 1/26] About 8 1/2 weeks now. I've been thinking a lot about how my pregnancy with Zadie and this one have been different. I remember that with Z, I was starving all the time -- I basically carried around a zipper bag full of cereal, raisins, and nuts everywhere I went. This time, I am hungry, but mainly in the hour or so before mealtimes, and then about 75% of the way through the food, no matter how delicious, I start feeling over-full. In fact, twice lately, I've taken seconds and then realized I shouldn't have -- I felt really sick one night after trying to eat a second serving of pasta. 

2/5: The ultrasound was kind of neat -- Zadie's first one, at about the same time, looked like a fava bean. This one is super-clear: you can see a head, torso, and hands pretty clearly. It's cool to have. 

2/14: 11 1/2 weeks! Doctor visits ramped up rather suddenly. I had an ultrasound at ten weeks, plus we did a bunch of paperworky intake stuff, and then this week, we had another appointment scheduled. I thought it was just for lab work, but I actually met with a nurse practitioner who checked all my vitals, did a breast exam, and did the external ultrasound (so I got to hear the heart for the first time!). She said it was a good, strong heartbeat. I was making my next appointment, and they said I should come back next week for a glucose test as well. No need to fast or anything -- just don't eat anything I knew was high in sugar beforehand. 

It was the day before Valentine's Day, and there was a basket of fun-sized candies on the desk, so I asked if I could take one. I had a small Twix. Then I went downstairs for the blood work for my genetic testing (we've decided to do this check for issues like Down's Syndrome, but are skipping anything more invasive which carries more risk). When I checked in at the pharmacy, the woman asked if I wanted to do my glucose test that day. Well... I sure as hell didn't want to come back again next week (since that would make three weeks in a row), but I had had that Twix. Would it throw off my results? Was it worth it? I decided to stay and do the glucose test. Luckily, the results came back this morning, and they were fine. Because I really didn't want to have to call my doctor and be like, "Hey, I know my glucose was high, but, well, there were these fun-sized Twix, you see..."

And that mostly brings us up to date. I'm at 13 weeks, which depending on where you look, is either the last week of the 1st trimester or the first week of the second. We have told everyone -- a few people knew already, then on Monday we told Zadie, and then we called Sweetie's family, and then I posted the video above on Facebook. We are surrounded by love and happiness and congratulatory wishes, and I'm feeling good. 

Oddly, the one thing that's vastly different (as alluded to above) between this pregnancy and the one with Zadie is that I have had morning sickness. Like, a lot. But it's not really bad sickness -- more like a bad case of reflux. I'm not puking or anything. Which I consider to be a bright side! Lots of people have it worse than me. The other kind of bright-side-ish thing is that my appetite has been so decreased that I've only gained a single pound. I am starting to round out a bit, but I'm still in my normal clothes. In fact, I have some cute maternity dresses that I bought, and I considered wearing one the other night, but when I put it on, it looked ridiculous! By three months with Z, I was wearing maternity clothes almost exclusively. I really popped early, and by four months I was huge. I'm not saying this because I'm vain about my body -- I know I sound proud of having not gained weight in my pregnancy, and for most people, that would be kind of perverse. But given my starting weight, I'm supposed to limit the amount I gain overall, so it's more like so far so good! 

And there's your typical Pollyanna optimism silver-lining of the day: I have morning sickness, but I'm not puking, and I'm not huge. Double rainbow all the way!!

Ray

I was outside surveying the garden today, not really working, but trying to plan for what I might plant and where. A neighbor walked by, one I didn't know, but still, I said hello. He stopped first to hope for rain (here in California, as you may know, we're in the middle of a serious drought, so we address it in most small talk). We talked about what measures we were taking to conserve water, and about letting our lawns die. He said that soon we'd have to not flush our toilets until we did "something serious." I mentioned that we already have a dual-flush toilet to help conserve. He expressed worry that his house was old enough that it wouldn't work well.

He indicated that his house was one of the oldest ones on the next block. Our two streets and one more form a sort of W with no real outlets other than the main cross-street. He mentioned that he has lived here since 1947. I said that my house was built in 1948, and he said he could remember -- that many of the lots were vacant when his parents first moved in. In fact, he gently chided a woman who I previously thought was the longest-residing neighbor for "thinking she remembers things that she doesn't really remember." After all, he remembers when she was born! (For the record, I think she's about 70, and she also lives in a house that belonged to her parents.)

We may have chatted a bit more than that, but not much. He started to walk on, and he glanced at the bumper of my car, which has a Human Rights Campaign equals sign sticker, the one that supports marriage equality.

"Oh!" he stopped. "You're gay!" (It's, uh, not an unreasonable conclusion to draw from the way I appoint myself on weekends.)
"Oh, no, just a supporter."
"Well, I'm gay!"
"Oh! I support you!" I laughed.

Apparently drawn to tell me a story, he then shared that he had first gotten married in 1965. His wife couldn't have children, and she feared that she faced limited marriage prospects because of it. He was willing to adopt (though he says that they did try the normal way), and they did. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and shortly thereafter, he was of no use to her anymore. He asked for a divorce, and by then it was the 70s, when it was a little more acceptable to be openly gay. He came out, and for a long time, his ex-wife and her friends accused him and blamed him. Why did he get married to her if he knew he was gay? He said that he didn't know when he married her, and he would have divorced her even if he was straight.

He didn't fill in a lot of the intervening decades, other than to mention that he has another "little old gay man" friend who is just a friend ("gayer than a peach orchard, though! You could see him coming a mile away.") I asked him if we was happy now, and he said he was. He had a very happy life.

He reminded me it was better for my car to keep it in the garage, he shared that he had gotten a bad case of the flu in November that lasted into December, we chatted a little bit about home sales and prices in the area, and then he continued on his walk.

He glanced once more at my car, this time at the only other sticker.
"'I guess I was punk once.' Huh. I guess I drank punch once."

There's no real takeaway from this story, other than that I'm so glad to live in the kind of neighborhood where people stop to chat. I love hearing people's stories.