Julia

Holder

Thank you. I ordered Patrick a bathrobe from one of your suggestions. Exactly what I was looking for. He and Steve have started going in the hot tub together in the morning (before you say what my mother immediately said when I told her, allow me to assure you that it is completely safe - Steve keeps his hot tub at 100 degrees. more of a warm tub actually) and I had gotten Steve a big cushy robe for this purpose years ago. I thought Patrick would like one too. Now that he and Steve are two sides of a single coin and all. They even wound up with the same haircut when Steve disdainfully avoided the kids' hair place I have always used in favor of having Patrick get his haircut with him at the barber.

My mother arrived this morning and Steve is leaving tonight. He will be, um, communing with nature (pheasants, mainly, but some ducks as well. geese perhaps) with five other "outdoor ethusiasts" until Sunday. He is SO excited and I take no offense from the fact that perhaps less than half of his glee is derived from the prospect of four whole days in North Dakota. I suspect he is dying to get out of here for a while and I don't blame him. He is feeling stressed and the break is well deserved. I have about twelve phone numbers for him, which I found reassuring until I contemplated that he is, at a minimum, seven hours from reaching me so if anything untoward were to happen he would miss it. Of course, what is he going to do anyway? I have an appointment this afternoon (yay!) and if god forbid I am starting to dilate or anything we will reassess from there.

You would think I would be aware of what my body is doing but I am really not. Everything right now feels like it is happening below the pantyline. I contract and I feel it in my pelvis. Someone kicks or something and I feel it in my pelvis. I assume 13a is still very low, although I think B moved again. They both prefer the right side of my body but since 13b is actually established to the left it leaves a lot of room on that side to shift about at will. Apart from the contracting and the bed rest and my weight (15 pounds. I am 28 weeks pregnant with twins and I weigh 15 pounds more than I did before IVF. I can only assume that one of the drugs I am on is affecting both my appetite and my metabolism. I am never hungry but I force myself to eat highly caloric stuff regardless - to no avail) I feel terrific. I have never slept this well in my life. Nothing hurts - not my back, not my feet, not the baby kicks... nothing. I am prepared for a downward spiral of unpleasantness but right now I am feeling quite sunny.

Patrick will, of course, be going as the letter B for Halloween. He said last year (when he went as the A) that he would be doing a letter a year and he seems determined to stick to that. When I asked what he would be if he was not completing the alphabet, he said, "A vacuum cleaner." After taking a moment to consider the complexities of creating a vacuum cleaner costume I gave the whole alphabet plan my whole-hearted support. He did point out that he will be the Z when he is twenty-six and I pointed out that he will actually be 30 as he did not start the alphabet thing until he was four. He frowned at me and said, "I am not going to argue about this" (a new expression of his - each day is just a delight, I tell you) but I noticed that he has started telling people that he will be done with the alphabet at 30. So he occasionally believes me when I say things.

Off to my appointment. More later (I finished Thursday Next and the Nursery Crimes books and I am almost done with the Dark Materials trilogy - book posts I think are in order, now that I have my laptop back).       

PS I turned 36 yesterday. It feels a whole lot like 35.

Check In

If you noticed a gray pall over everything and the fact that laughter and music had left the world last week I have an explanation for you: my laptop died.

Right after I posted that last post here, actually. One second I was googling bathrobes for Patrick (he needs a normal terrycloth bathrobe, preferably with a hood - I cannot find one for love nor money; any suggestions?) and the next my laptop just... shut off. And would not turn back on again. It was AWFUL. I got two REDBOOK posts up by using my actual computer but verticality is not kind to me and that was quite literally the only time I spent online for ten days. It sucked.

It was surprisingly difficult to find a place to repair it, too. I don't mean to chastise you but really this disposable age of yours has gone too far. While it might in fact be cheaper to buy a new cordless phone rather than pay to replace the batteries if more than one handset goes down at a time, surely this principle does not apply to laptops as well? We tried several local places who either did not fix things or did fix them but had to send them out of state to do so (with a minimum of two weeks turn around). Finally Steve googled something or other and we wound up sending it to, write this down because they were GREAT, AZ Laptop Repair in Santa Clara CA. They got it on Wednesday and had it fixed by Friday. And they managed to save all my data and were not very expensive. Oh and they removed the, um, cookie piece that was jamming the "w" key. Not sure how that got there but I am glad it is now gone.

This is just a quickie, I-am-alive-and-still-pregnant post. I am not convinced that my laptop did not die due to overheating due to prolonged usage so I am trying to keep it down to an hour. And I wasted the first fifty minutes trying to find that goddamned bathrobe, but I will  be back later after this thing cools. New REDBOOK post up too, if you are interested.   

PS After only getting two right in the football pool three weeks ago I sulked and let Patrick do my picks for me. He got eight last week so I let him do it again. Provided the Packers win tonight he will have a respectable eleven this week. I wonder if he has a system.

Apothecary

Alice asked about the Lovenox and I have a soft spot for Alice. So, yes I am still taking Lovenox and have been since... I think I started the Lovenox at transfer but I might have waited until the positive pregnancy test (all of four days later). My OB said to start it at ovulation so I worked from there, allowing for IVF weirdness and the fact that when I tentatively mentioned Lovenox to my RE (man, I haven't thought about them in months - you would think I would be more grateful) he rolled his eyes so hard they would have stuck like that if I had smacked him on the back of his head. Which I considered. Anyway, it is a blood thinner and comes with its own needle and every night I try to find a new place to inject myself in the stomach. Eventually I discovered that you can pinprick around for a while until you find a spot that hurts less than the others. This has left me with a fine rash of tiny little red dots but many fewer actual blow-out bruises. For what it is worth. Lovenox, by the by, stings like an adder and comes with horrible needles. They are so weensy they should be effortless but they really suck. Oh and Alice's question was a two-parter: am I on Lovenox and why? So yes and as for why... that is harder. In theory I am a heterogeneous carrier for a single gene mutation called MTHFR. And MTHFR is linked to clotting disorders. However, half the Caucasian women in the world are carriers and yet the vast majority of women manage without blood thinners just fine. So I would be inclined to give the Lovenox a pass were it not for the fact that I am pitifully superstitious. And I noticed that the pregnancies for which I was on Lovenox (agreed to out of desperation), for the most part, progressed further than the ones for which I was not. Same unbalanced translocation ultimately was fatal but with the Lovenox the fetii developed to eleven weeks or so and without it they tended to succumb around seven or eight. This is probably a total coincidence but I could not shake the conviction that more than one thing might be contributing to the pregnancy failures. So my rationale was that if I could get a genetically normal embryo started perhaps a guaranteed clot-free environment would help. The only indication I have that this is anything other than a placebo for me is when I was in the hospital the other week I was off the Lovenox and they had to flush out my IV every time they changed it because I kept forming clots around it. Oh, and I rarely bruise despite being on it. Hardly incontrovertible evidence but there it is. Fear trumps logic.

Speaking of needles, the terbutaline pump is not bad at all, other than the part where you are attached via a tube embedded in your thigh to a vinyl clutch the size of a small evening bag. I have not sufficiently examined the apparatus but the needle bit is just used briefly to guide the little tube in and then it gets thrown away. So you have a disc with a... well, a grommet I suppose, going into your skin and then you click another disc on top of that with a tube that connects to dispenser and voila. Every three to five days you pull out the one grommet and put another one in the other leg. You would think it would be horrible to sit there and push this thing in but it isn't. My big fear was accidentally ripping it out and I did that and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I spent a few nights misjudging the amount of medicine I had left in the dispenser (hint: actual math makes no sense with these things - you would think having 1.34 left with hourly doses of .066 and two bolus hits of .274 a piece would leave you plenty until morning but you would be wrong) and subsequently being woken up to change the cartridges at various ungodly hours. It took me a while but I finally learned to just abandon small amounts and put in a full cartridge every night if there is even a smidgen of doubt that it will last me. Thus ends our public service announcement.

I just took advantage of the every-three-to-five-day leg swap and had the nicest bath. I can shower in the interim but a shower always feels like work to me, what with the standing and the moving your arms around. I put a new leg grommet in but I am a little concerned about it. SOMETHING was just leaking down my leg and on to the bed and I am not sure if it was the insertion site or if my hair just dripped. It seems ok but it is rather unnerving. I have my appointment (yay! out of the house! ultrasound! glucose screening!) in two hours so I will ask someone there what they think.   

------------------ back now. I started leaking again more obviously from the insertion site so I called the nurses and they told me to swap out the needle-tube thingy with a new one and to give the needle a half-turn when I pulled it out. She mumbled something about the manufacturer. Whatever.

The doctor's appointment was quite nice, all things considered. I made a superhuman effort to pay attention when they told me what to do next this time and dithered considerably less as a result. I passed the one hour glucose, which I was expecting, and gained a pound and a half, which I was not. Doreen and I and the 13s spent a cozy forty minutes or so taking measurements. They are now big enough that I can no longer make heads or tails of any of it. Not that I could in the first place, but it is officially a jumble of bits now. 13a is head down... waaaaaaaaaaaaay down. I TOLD you I felt something in my pelvis. That would be A. The baby is so far down that it was very difficult to get a head measurement. I wondered if is is a bad thing? No one mentioned anything like, hey, watch it! that baby is about to fall out! so I guess not. 13b has turned completely upside-down in the past week and is now bottom-to-head with A, feet down. My OB airily said that as long as 13a stays head down I'll be fine to deliver vaginally. Apparently she recently delivered the latter of a set of twins by pulling the baby out feet first. I admit this sounds uncomfortable to me but I am not worrying about it yet. Right now How I deliver is the very least of my concerns falling behind a very big When and a smaller but related Where. Who/What is a matter of intense curiosity but I am content to coast on that for another X weeks. Steve is refusing to discuss names rationally (Drake? he says. Oh I know, how about Drake!) and my fear right now is that I am going to be weakened by how terrific he's being and say yes one of these days. And no offense to any Drakes out there, but it is not to my taste. And even if I succumb (which I will not) that still leaves us, oh, one two THREE names short. He's killing me.

Steve really, truly is being amazing. I know I have said this before but it bears repeating. He makes breakfast lunch and dinner, does the laundry, arranges playdates, goes to the library, fetches and carries all day long, and he even organized the pantry. Meanwhile, he put primer up in the new rooms and is planning on painting them this weekend. Oh yeah, and he is running his business, apparently making $$$ in his spare time! from home! He made me dinner and then took Patrick out for pizza tonight. I am quite touched by everything he is doing. And he isn't even all that crabby. He turns 40 on December 8th and I had planned for years to throw him a REALLY big surprise party for it. Steve loves surprises. When I did the math on the twin thing, though, I realized that I was going to have to pass on anything that involved deposits but I still planned on doing something. Now I have no idea what. Any thoughts? Maybe the surprise will be that we watch Netflix on his birthday and then I throw something in March. But if you think of anything that I can plan and execute from bed let me know.

Oh, I forgot. Yes I am still on bed rest but she did bump my threshold for contractions with the monitoring people so I will have to do less re-monitoring. Last night (was it last night? I honestly cannot remember) I was up until 2 because I kept having too many contractions and I had to take more terbutaline and then monitor again. Total drag.

And 13a is 1lb 14oz and 13b is 2lb 1oz. So, growing.

It's good. I am feeling very excited.               

Fine. Same. Fine.

Hi!

Sorry to leave you hanging. I sort of hate my laptop, which is slower than hell and keeps abandoning an internet connection every time a leaf is stirred by a breeze outside. Worst of all, its newest transgression is that it has developed a partially stuck "w" so I keep riting ords ithout it and have to backtrack. But enough about my troubles.

Friday's OB appointment was... not particularly satisfying. She checked the heartbeats and asked how I was doing. I said that the terbutaline appears to be helping with the resting contractions but is not doing much for the prompted contractions; by which I mean the contractions that seem to be started by some action on my part. Sitting up, say, or walking to the bathroom. I spent most of yesterday in semi-recline on the couch in the living room (watching football and weeping quietly, as I only got TWO right in the pool. TWO. it seems like a statistical impossibility but noooooooooo) and by the time I did my nighttime monitoring session I had eight contractions in an hour. So I had to take an extra dose and re-monitor and it was a drag, culminating in my accidentally ripping the damn tube out of my leg through injudiciously speedy underwear removal. I KNEW that as going to happen eventually, by the way. It sort of stung but the worst part is I had to put a new tube in the other leg. No big deal - tiny needle, CAKE compared to the Lovenox injections - BUT the window between swapping legs is my only chance to soak in the bathtub. I had been looking forward to it enormously and instead I had to take a hurried little splash-and-go. Most depressing.

Where was I?

Oh right. Telling the doctor about the contractions. She had me monitor in their office for about 20 minutes and when I was done the entire staff except the nurse who unhooked me was out to lunch. So Steve and I just left. I asked him if he had any clue as to whether I was supposed to stay on bed rest and he said he thought I was. So I am. We are opting for a commonsense approach, based upon the following model:

1. We are assuming that the contractions could lead to preterm labor. Although I am not entirely convinced of this the alternative if I am wrong is not worth considering.

2. Even minimal activity causes me to have some fairly spectacular contractions. I could rate the ones I get on a scale of one to five (with tens being actual hey-there! you are IN LABOR contractions) and for the most part they are just dainty threes. Noticeable but not bad. The fives, though, are enough to stop conversation and make me grimace (like this) and the casual observer is given a fairly good idea of where exactly the babies are located as my abdomen compresses like a vacuum pack.         

3. If the goal is to contract as little as possible then the obvious thing to do is stay under 45 degrees as much as possible.

Ipso facto.

I am actually in a great mood, all things considered. Just past 26 weeks, babies moving, Steve bearing up nobly, Patrick being more or less agreeable. I had been hoping that I would have a breezy pregnancy, the kind that people would say (as I would suddenly find myself dropped into a Dorothy Parker short story but one in which marital procreation was not a dirty shameful bore) "My DEAR you look too too marvelous! Due in a week? With twins? How EVER do you manage?" I saw myself twinkling through the third trimester with many a merry jest and a casual dismissal of related discomforts. And I am. I am just all by myself in bed, is all, and the only person impressed by my fortitude is... huh. Well, me, I guess.

I need to write a post about The Calligrapher, so if you've read it polish up your fingers for a little online book club. I liked it. I liked his writing. BUT WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE MODERN NOVEL? Good LORD. I mean, GAH. But I shall save my indignation for that post.

Right now I am half-way through the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next series. Hurray! I never would have read it without your urging, so thank you. It is very entertaining. I loved the suggestions for books I do not know, but I also loved the suggestions for books I already adore. Because there is nothing nicer than having someone say, "I think you would really like this" and knowing that they are absolutely correct. It made me feel pleasantly understood and I thought, "Oh man! I hope someone who has never read these is paying attention." Like when someone suggested Wodehouse. My passion for Wodehouse goes back to the third grade. I wrote my final high school English paper on Wodehouse and the Eternal Edwardian. I own all but nine of his books and they have their own section on the bookshelf. I was recently fascinated by some blog in which the woman had her books organized by color (color?) but I tend to stick to category. With the exception of Wodehouse. Who stands alone. And E F Benson? I read the Mapp & Lucia series twice a year like clockwork and every time it is perfect. Sayers I have read over and over, except for Nine Tailors and Red Herring (or five herrings or five red herrings I cannot remember) - neither of which I have ever managed more than once. Or, my god, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series. Sweet merciful heavens is THAT a series.

So thank you very much, again. I am getting quite a bit of pleasure from the book recommendations and I hope you are as well. A Suitable Boy just arrived and I can hardly wait. It's MASSIVE.

On an administrative note, I can read my Darwin mail online but I cannot reply to it without opening new files and crashing my laptop repeatedly. So I have a lot of email to which I wish to reply but it may take a while. For those of you who wondered about the migraine drug, I am getting good results with Fioricet. Bear in mind, though, I do not get full-scale migraines, just crappy vascular headaches. So I do not know how well this stuff works on a more powerful problem but it certainly knocked my ass back. So I hope it works for you.          

Interlude

Thank you so much. The suggestions on the last post were terrific. I am very very grateful to you. I requested the first twenty books mentioned (more or less literally) from the library and Steve has been very accommodating in shuttling over to pick them up. I also had a friend drop off a stack of things to read and have been grabbing them out of the bag at random. I just started The Calligrapher by Edward Docx and am very pleased. His is a stately and elegant prose. With swearing.

The contractions picked up last night and this morning so they have upped my dosage a bit. Steve keeps talking hopefully about this magical appointment on Friday at which I will suddenly be released to my own recognizance (perhaps with a gentle admonishment to limit my rugby playing) but I am less sanguine. I took a shower yesterday (WOW. it was GREAT) and had about seven contractions in ten minutes (well, great except for that part).

Right now I am feeling sort of contract-y and... unpleasant in the nethers. Pressure? Baby poking cervix? Bad gunk? Normal gunk? Can't tell. I may have to call the damned doctor but I think first I will stop this, drink a hogshead of water, lie perfectly still and see if that helps.

More later. I just wanted to check in.

Well, Hell

I asked Steve to get something up here yesterday but since he has been busy doing everything else (quite literally) I think some blog neglect can certainly be forgiven.

The short version is that I was admitted to L&D on Thursday afternoon with two skinned knees, lots of contractions, a positive fetal fibronectin, and a rather impressive resistance to drugs intended to stop contractions all together. The longer version is up at REDBOOK. I only had Word, I say apologetically, no internet; so once Steve brought my laptop I was able to type something up for them but not here. Sorry.

I am home now after a really scary night that involved getting THIS CLOSE (twice) to boarding an ambulance for immediate transfer to a facility with a Level Better NICU (I don't know if that would be a Level I? I was at a Level II) and a really long day in hospital (I love how the British drop the article with that word. it's so... cozy). I am on strict bedrest and I have a fucking tube in my leg that is administering a steady dose of the Devil's favorite nectar - terbutaline. I now know how consumptives felt: my lungs ache and it has only been 2 days.

Huh. I find that my arms are beginning to ache too. I will need to get a better bed setup here but right now the laptop is on my lap but I am reclined with short arms and some babies (fortunately) still in the way.

More later. Actually I assume MUCH more later. What the hell else is there to do? At least for another week until my next doctor's visit when she might relax the resting.

In the meantime I need so much advice it isn't even funny, so if you have a minute or two I would love your thoughts:

*I JUST finished several months of re-reading the delightful Aubrey-Maturin series. Now I could cry because I have nothing to read. Anything you can suggest with a few caveats: nothing depressing, depressing-but-redemptive, intensely thoughtful, or nonfiction unless it is funny. Bill Bryson, I could do. Calvin Trillin I would welcome. I hear whats-his-name is good, um, me talk.. Sedaris. Yes. Worth reading? I favor the 19th and early 20th century stuff and have read prodigiously of it - but if it is your field and you know something lovely and obscure (say you just discovered a George Eliot manuscript in your attic - just toss it in an envelope and I would be happy to return it). Ouch. Shoulders. Um, fun trash is great too, just not TOO badly written. Isn't there some kind of genre that features legs-in-shoes on the cover? Young adult fiction can be charming: Princess Diaries I liked, Potter naturally. That sort of thing. Is the Amber Spyglass series worth a look? Anyway, just... help. I would be grateful

*Steve probably COULD cook in much the same way that armed with the manual I probably COULD start the lawn tractor and drive it around. Neither of us want to learn. And I am cool with that. Can you think of very, very easy things he can do that resemble real food? Crockpot chicken covered with Campbell's soup is ok, we don't need anything featuring searing and or lardons - I don't mind carryout but it would be nice to have options.

I have more but I really must stop now.

13s, on the very best of the bright side, seem to be doing well. And I am 25 weeks today. So... onward. 

Help, Please

First, I should tell you that I am about to blow you off so I can go watch the second season of The Office (American-style) with Steve. I think it is important that you know where our relationship stands right now, you and me.

Second, I am going to add indignity to insult by asking for your help, despite the blowing. I am writing an article (!) for a magazine (!!) and I need some help finding sources. Since the collective y'all always know everything, I thought I could save myself another fruitless 90 minutes in the nonfiction stacks of the library (Patrick scored two books on asteroids and a coffee table-sized book on Hanukkah traditions, so the trip was not a complete loss but still) and just ask you:

I need to talk with life coach/therapist/self-help author(es/s) in an effort to glean some insights for this piece I am doing. If you know anyone who fits the bill and who you think would consent to be interviewed by me, please post or shoot me an email and I will be eternally grateful. I might even be willing to bribe you, so add that to your considering factors. In the latter category of general self-help (with an eye, maybe, towards life affirmation stuff) do you have any recent book suggestions? I read 19th C fiction and what I do not know about anything after whalebone corsetry could fit into Almack's. You are, of course, free to post anything that occurs to you in the comments, but if you prefer more private communication my email is up there and I promise to treat your information with professionalism, courtesy and respect.

Third, because I DO take your advice so literally I am volunteering at Patrick's school tomorrow. I am looking forward to it. New posts from me all over the place, I hope, at some point tomorrow and Friday. And holy cow! Did I tell you that Steve's birth half-brothers came to visit us for the weekend from New England? Remind me. I'll tell you about that.