Good news! It’s been a year now since I last got pregnant, not that that worked out, and I think I may actually finally be mildly interested in getting pregnant again! After the miscarriage I was stunned, then overwhelmed with the move, then apathetic and frankly too busy at the beach to care, then in a bit of denial, and now a little ready.

Not that it matters, since I won’t. I mean, hello, we’re in the middle of an international move. Sweden’s national health plan also won’t cover your pregnancy if it starts before you get enrolled. And just a few months after getting there I’d like to start an intensive year-long course in Swedish, after which I’ll need to go through the teaching (re)certification process. And then there’s the renovations we want to do. And passing the Swedish driving exam. Plus learning how to drive manual. That last one’s like a full-time job. Not really a good time to see about creating new life to care for.

But Little Girl’s three-and-a-half already. And let’s see, we wait another year-and-a-half or so to try, I get pregnant in a reasonable time-frame, I actually stay pregnant and don’t have to start over, then the baby’s born…I don’t know, that’s a lot of math, but that’s a really long time from now! Little girl’s car seat will totally have expired by then. I don’t want to buy a new one! I don’t think you realize how expensive that thing was.

And I’m starting to like babies a little bit (blame our one friend here; she has a two-week-old that never cries! It just gurgles and grabs your finger! Aww!). I’ve looked at old videos of Little Girl, too. She was so cute! If you leave breastfeeding out of it, maybe babies aren’t so bad! They can’t run away when you want to cuddle them!

Even if I decided not to do such a hardcore Swedish language program, which is my main mental obstacle to getting pregnant in the next year-and-a-half, Husband isn’t anxious to have babies. He wasn’t with Little Girl, either–it wasn’t an unbearable need for him like it was for me–though of course she’s the absolute center of his life now. Her fleeting preschool whim is his command. I’m not worried about that. He’d get on board.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls here. The isolation of a new baby (not that I had that with Little Girl, but I have no idea about Sweden) wouldn’t be a good combo with a new country with a foreign language. Hello, postpartum depression! And Husband is having a hard time finding a job there (he’s been looking) that doesn’t require a lot of travel. Can you imagine–winter dark and cold, preschooler with cabin fever, no friends, stupid incomprehensible language, can’t drive, half-finished kitchen, bathroom with no bathing apparatus, all alone in the countryside, fussy newborn who fears and loathes my breasts? Holy shit.

That’s the worst-cast scenario. Maybe things could go differently. It’ll be a while before it makes any sense to roll the dice on this one, anyway. But it feels a little healing to want to hold a baby, even if I still have to hand it back immediately if it starts to even look like it might want to fuss.

Big week! Monday I sent in my application for residency to the Swedish embassy. Holy hell was that a lot of paperwork. And I made it extra stressful for myself by deciding to include a cover letter explaining why we wanted to move to Sweden plus some family photos as evidence that we’re, you know, actually a family. I had a line in the letter about being excited that Little Girl would enjoy “the benefits of growing up Swedish,” by which I meant the landscape, family, the culture, whatever. But then I freaked out, thinking they would take that to mean, “I can’t wait to get my grubby hands on all that money from the government!” so had to turn the car back and change it to being excited she’d have the opportunity to grow up there, which hopefully would sound less avaricious.

AND someone made an offer on our house! Yes! But bittersweet. Obviously selling it was the whole point of putting it on the market, but it makes me sad to think that, even though we never see them, our awesome backyard will never again be ours to frolick in, our gleaming hardwood floors that Husband put in will not be ours to enjoy, our gardenias, transplanted from my grandmother’s garden, might be neglected. It also makes me sad that we (should we come to an agreement on the price; they crazy lowballed us) will be paying around 30k for the privilege of no longer owning the property. Thirty thousand dollars. Talk about a shitty investment. Makes me sick, really, and it’s through no fault of our own, other than selling at the wrong time. The housing market in my area is particular deplorable now and houses are going for next-to-nothing.

While, of course, we are fortunate we even have 30k to pay not to own it, and I totally sympathize with all the people that have had to foreclose for just that kind of reason, as that is insane, we kind of had other plans for that particular chunk of money. Those super-exciting renovation plans for the house in Sweden are, well, not quite as exciting anymore. Which blows.

I had hoped to have a trinity of neat news in this post, but my sister-in-law’s baby is stubbornly a week overdue, and they’ll let you go at least three weeks in Sweden, so who knows when I’ll find out what flavor Little Girl’s new cousin is. My grandmother had advice for me when I was tired of being pregnant (though I didn’t go past 37 weeks as it turned out): They’re easier to take care of inside than out. So true. I hope she has an easy time of it. I certainly don’t envy her the prospect of newborn care. Blech. A lot of people love little tiny babies but they’re just itty bitty balls of audial and sleep torture to me, and I’m not even mentioning my particular baby-related bête noire, obvious from the sidebar.

The night before my D & E the real estate agent came over as we’d already planned some time prior. With the pregnancy out of the equation it was easier for us to agree with her that it made the most sense to put the house on the market ASAP given the particulars of our situation and the local market. And in the days since we’ve also finally decided on where we are moving. To the beach house. On April 23rd. For six or so months. And then Sweden.

I’m going to go ahead and agree with you that this is all very sudden and making such decisions while also dealing with the miscarriage is less than ideal. On the bright side it’s something else to think about.

We won’t be living in this house while it’s on the market as the agent believed it will “show better empty.” I am pretty sure this is code for “you guys own weird stuff.” Plus we have all the pets and the master bedroom is the playroom and the market is so tight you have to make a real effort and, well, the beach house is rent-free, anyway. She also wants us to paint, like, every single room. Husband’s been a madman getting stuff done (and as I am very much still recovering, Little Girl has been watching about four movies a day, in between visits from my friends).

Until June, Husband will be mostly in Europe for work, actually, so Little Girl and I are sort of moving there alone. When his work calms down, he intends to request to telecommute from the beach house full-time (it’s more than four hours from our current city). If they say no, I have already arranged with my research job to telecommute full-time and we can get benefits that way. We’ll continue in that vein until our house sells and we have made the final arrangements for the international move.

Sometimes these plans sound exciting. The beach! Sweden! More often I am somewhere between morose and apprehensive about leaving my friends, about Little Girl’s having to leave her buddies and her beloved babysitter, about being away from Husband so much of the time, about having to quit my teaching job, about maybe having to support us all with a really boring job. I worry my psyche will conflate these coincidental occurrences of miscarriage and move and I’ll unconsciously think of myself as having run away from it–or if I’m unhappy with the move(s), blaming them on the loss. These plans were, of course, in the works all along, but it’s an unavoidable truth that we never would or could have chosen the beach option and moving up the Sweden move if we hadn’t lost the pregnancy and didn’t need as much stability. So here we go.

Back from the hospital, up from my really kind of glorious, faintly-medicated nap, since I barely slept last night. The whole thing was sad and unpleasant in a low-key kind of way, but it wasn’t totally without merit to get to spend hours reading beside Husband on a rainy day while Little Girl got spoiled silly by my mom at home. The multiple attempts to get a line in me I could have predicted; I knew I cry coming out of anesthesia even with no special reason so I was totally prepared for sobbing under the care of efficiently compassionate blurry women in recovery; it doesn’t even really hurt, physically, and almost no blood so far.

The worst part, besides the fact that my main OB nurse was insanely pregnant (she sort of kept trying to angle her clipboard in front of her belly to hide it quite unsuccessfully), was actually in admissions, when the billing lady, with an odd mixture of insouciance and confrontation in her voice, announced, “and the cost of this procedure is $10,000 [big pause; you should have seen our faces]…your insurance plan [blah blah blah] so we need you to pay $3,000 today we will send you a bill for more if necessary. Would you like a payment plan?”

Since I haven’t even paid the OB, maternal-fetal specialist, or bloodwork bills, it looks like care for this first-trimester failed pregnancy will end up costing us thousands more than my entire pregnancy with Little Girl, even with its twelve ultrasounds, multi-day preeclampsia hospital stay, and c-section. To which I say: fuck you, crappy insurance company, and especially fuck you, Husband’s job, for buying the worst plan ever. If I’d have known it would cost so much I would have at least been able to consider shopping around and going to Planned Parenthood or something, which offers the same service for a few hundred bucks. For that matter, I could have theoretically done it for free at home.

I’m still not done being shocked and pissed about the cost, but I am very glad I got it done. The staff and doctor were all, to a one, wonderful and professional and, best of all, made eye contact. The tear-inducingly sweet OB (the one we saw when we thought Little Girl had died, as it happens) said it was extremely rare–with a less than 2% chance–to miscarry after seeing a heartbeat at 8 weeks. Also, he said the chances were very good it was some kind of middle-of-the-road type of genetic defect, not affecting the heart or other big organs but serious enough for life not to go on. He made efforts to convince me it was unlikely to have been something my body did and I guess I’ll try to go ahead and believe him. He also said the placenta is (oh, it’s gone now: was) apparently just overeager and doing such a great job that I’d likely not have miscarried on my own for another month or so, and said it was a good choice to have the D & E. And I agree.

My mom and husband are taking good care of me (actually they’re off at the store for fancy dinner ingredients that, sadly, do not end up in the form of a pizza, but it’s the thought that counts). A friend dropped off a care package today, and others have asked to come by (of those who know–it’ll take weeks to tell everyone and I don’t look forward to those conversations one bit or, really, seeing my friends who have two kids). I feel grateful and loved and your comments, too, have been a real comfort. Thank you.

I just wish I knew what happened. Was it just One of Those Things, or did my fucked-up PCOS hormones get it? Or perhaps it was my “intriguing” autoimmune/blood-clotting disorder? Would I really prefer the fetus had something wrong with it to having my own body collude in killing a new life? I feel angry with my body more than sad about losing the baby dream (and the baby reality) at this point. And what’s with my body’s obliviousness to the tiny corpse inside me, anyway? Can it do nothing right? If you’re going to kill my children at least let me know. Is this some sort of joke, repaying me for my misguided optimism this go round since it didn’t take me the years and years to conceive like it did before, tricking me into thinking my body could do things normally?

Tomorrow morning I go in for the D & E. Though it strikes me as…disloyal…to allow the flesh of my flesh to be vacuumed out and trashed, it’s not like it would be more loving to flush it away at home. And the OB said that if I stayed home, and miscarried whenever and for however long, that I should be certain to go to the ER if I soak through more than two pads an hour with blood. Um, I don’t want to soak through any pads in an hour. It feels a little, ideologically, like choosing a scheduled c-section over an unassisted homebirth, but basically it comes down to this: no, I don’t actually trust my body to handle it. Oh, and it’s not so fun showing and what is showing is my dead fetus.

If I’m angry, Husband is sad. We both have this idea it was a girl, and he had started working up fantasies about two little gigglers running around the house. Well, I guess I had, too. We don’t plan to try again any time soon, not with the upcoming move to Sweden and one thing and another and my body’s general disagreeableness. Little Giggler #2 may never be.

This afternoon I had to go into the office for some meetings. Normally I telecommute, but before Little Girl I was there physically so people know me. Apparently my boss, whom I told a couple of weeks ago (after the heart had already stopped beating, evidently, unbeknownst to me), had spread out the word already so I had this conversation more than was acceptable:

Co-worker (arms out for a hug): Oh hiiiii! Congratulations! How are you feeling?
Me: Uh…actually…um…

But despite this kind of thing I am feeling less unhinged than I would have expected. When they told me I had miscarried Little Girl (the day before the ultrasound that proved them wrong) I was catatonic, devastated, frozen in grief. For me, at least, it really does help having Little Girl. I can just think of her growling “I a cookie monster!” with Thin Mint crumbs ringing her mouth and can’t help but smile. And be grateful.

How much I appreciate all of your comments and your sharing of experiences I can’t express. It has really helped and I thank you. The closest I’ve come to crying, besides when I told my mom and lying in bed last night thinking of the OB’s saying, while studiously not making eye contact, that “it wasn’t a successful pregnancy,” was seeing the link from Lost and Found.

I’ve prepared as well as I can for the D & E. I spent about fifty bucks on Miscarriage Food, which is surprisingly similar to Period Food, as it turns out. I already filled my pain medication prescription and there is plenty of wine and Kahlua. I plan to request really good drugs at every turn in the hospital and make the most of the thing. I’ll let you know.

Updated: Now, tonight, I’m not angry. Now I’m so, so sad. I wanted that baby, and my baby died. I want my baby back. I don’t want surgery. I don’t want my baby to be dead. I want my baby.

Written Tuesday:

What’s your minimum standard for an OB visit? Your child not screaming and crying for an excessive period of time? Not having a loud argument in the hall with your OB and an audience about due dates while this temper tantrum is occurring? Not utterly losing this argument even though the doctor admitted that there was no medical reason not to correct the due date, with her also admitting she wouldn’t change it so as “not to confuse people”?* No unnecessary bloodwork you already had a couple weeks before and which aren’t covered by insurance? Oh, and definitely not failing repeatedly to find the fetus’s heartbeat with a variety of apparata, right? Then by those standards today I had the Worst OB Visit Ever.

I have an ultrasound tomorrow to see what’s what. Little Girl is absolutely not coming. I’m not crazy-worried since, duh, I’m not as far along as they insist, so you can’t always find the heartbeat yet. But the experience certainly didn’t improve the visit any. Or this week.

+++

Written Wednesday:

No heartbeat. Evidently it died two or three weeks ago. I have to decide for a DIY miscarriage or a D & E. If you have any advice about that I’d like to hear it. I’ve never had a miscarriage before. I’m not sure what I am feeling. Other than “not happy.”

Um, guess it doesn’t matter about the due date anymore.

Before, I have mentioned that my neighborhood, along with the surrounding areas, has been going downhill, though it was lovely when we moved in seven years ago. Gangs are a problem at the high school a mile away; teenagers roam the streets and cars slowly wander around our cul de sac in the middle of the night; people walk along the highway nearby with their possessions in grocery carts; the police have repeatedly been called to break up outdoor arguments at the house immediately to our right; and the guy two doors down very obviously grows and sells pot from his home, in front of which, at all hours, cars park for twenty or thirty minutes at a time, loud music playing, before the owners climb back into their vehicles and speed off. This weekend, when we discovered items have been stolen (ladders from a good hiding spot under the porch, and our neighbor’s kid’s bike was stolen from his front porch), was the last straw. We have to move. It’s only going to get worse.

But where to? In a year we plan to move to Sweden, and we’ve talked about just going ahead and doing that now and not trying to move with a zero-year-old, should this pregnancy continue. Or we could move to a rental for a year in the very nice area close to Husband’s work, reducing his commute, which is over an hour. This way we’d at least be somewhat near friends, and I could continue my teaching job. There’s my family’s beach house, which has the advantage of being rent-free and gorgeous, but we have no jobs there, though I could work full-time remotely and get benefits that way, though I’m more of a quitter than a maternity-leave taker so I’m not sure that would work. Each day, amidst all the mad Freeycling and Craigslisting to get rid of the stuff we don’t want to move no matter where we go, I wander amongst these options, settling on one, then finding some fatal flaw with it, then wishing just to stay here, then thinking of thieving strangers paying attention to when we are home, and wishing to flee. Husband will be gone for much of April and May in Europe again, and he wants us out of here, somewhere, before the trips begin. I agree–but where?

Yesterday was all about moving to Sweden. An adventure! The beautiful summer there! Having a baby surrounded by family! My sister-in-law’s child is due three months before mine–how fun! Then Husband started talking about how we should give living there a trial run and not kick his parents out of the house right away (we are supposed to buy the homestead from them and they’re retiring to an apartment). He opined that his father would clear out the little office with the walk-in closet and we could live there. Um, you want me to live in a foreign country with my in-laws and no chance of using my own furniture or decorations or doing any renovations while living in a former smoking room with a baby and a preschooler? Thanks, but no thanks. When I told him I could see myself “not enjoying” that situation–no chance to make the place my own, no play room, no solitude–he completely failed to understand, making me really not want to get into that situation with no advocate.

So now we’ve given ourselves a week to decide. And I just don’t know. What should we keep in mind?

A few weeks ago my mother was talking about how she always regretted not having professional pictures taken when I got married (she seems to have forgotten that we did not have those pictures made because I did not to). She was telling me how she wanted to get an artist to paint an oil from a photograph of me she took. I told her if she wanted to do that kind of thing that I’d rather she wait until we could do a portrait of Little Girl and Number Two, and plus I thought it was too expensive anyway. But since it was something she wanted for herself, I told her to do it if she wanted.

Today she emailed me the study from the painter and wanted comments to pass along before he does the real thing. She also told me the portrait is actually for me to own. It’s very nicely done, beautiful. But I don’t quite know. I think the lips are off in shape (I’m not so cupidy), and is it just me, or did he give me a huge breast reduction? I suspect instructions from my mother to that end (I get my breasts from my dad’s side of the family and they’re not quite to her taste). What do you think?

While I’m posting pictures of myself, here I am at, uh, 10 weeks? (It’s hard for me to keep track because of the ongoing due date disagreement).

And Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Little Girl! Too cute.

I’ve been putting off posting about the visit to the maternal-fetal specialist partly because I don’t want this to be a pregnancy/medical blog and also because I’ve been giving the situation some thought. What I learned is that my body at some point mistakenly decided to create antibodies to a chemical called plasminogen activator inhibitor which helps break down blood clots. It’s kind of an autoimmune problem. By all rights I should have recurrent miscarriages and blood clots. And I don’t. The theory is that, ironically, my liver, which as you almost certainly do not recall has always been whack (I get it from my mom), makes me clot less because of its particular dysfunction. So my defects seem to be canceling themselves out. The doctor didn’t seem all that concerned, just quite intrigued (his word, in fact–though “intriguing” is not the kind of patient I would like to be; “boring” or “routine” would be better).

All this sounds odd but the appointment was pretty good. Other issues were discussed in ways that are a little to a lot satisfactory in my opinion, and I had an ultrasound and things are looking fine, and a treatment plan that makes me content, though a still-incorrect due date.

What’s weird is if you list it all out I have a lot of strange, alarming-sounding medical problems–head to, literally, toes–but I feel absolutely fine and well and capable. Though these things, of course, well, I’d prefer I not have them, yet they are not causing me pain or difficulty really, and I am doing all I can (excellent diet, some exercise) to keep myself in good working order. And I do follow doctors’ orders, so what else is there? It does suggest a shitstorm in old age, though. I think I have risk factors all over the place for: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, uh…some other bad stuff. But nothing I can do but eat well and hope for the best. My GP says you can tell from my bloodwork I have horrible DNA but fantastic habits.

Whenever I tell my mom about my medical weirdnesses she gets really apologetic and then sort of defensive about my genetic inheritance. “I’m so sorry I gave you such horrible genes” turns into “I always fed you healthy food growing up, and no one else in the family has these problems!” It would never occur to my dad to take responsibility (in more ways than one) but he gets very dramatic about how concerned I must be about these issues. Like I said, if I had a choice I wish I did not have them, but I really do feel strong and healthy and I am confident in the care I am getting, and now that I have lost so much weight, the doctors never blame me for them anymore.

At my ultrasound today I found out that there is one new beating heart inside me, no more, no less, which is just what we were going for. 171 bpm. My little buddy has arm and leg buds in the appropriate quantities, and its brain has differentiated areas. Everything was fine. Great. Perfect!

Husband wanted to bring Little Girl to the sonogram as she is a “member of the family.” I didn’t, in case Something Bad happened, but it was fine, except that, in her words, “This video is boring. I want a new video.” But she did fine.

Making conversation, I asked the ultrasound lady, “Isn’t it technically an embryo until eight or ten weeks or something?” to which she replied, in a prickly tone making it clear she wanted to differentiate herself from people who loooove abortion, “It’s a baby from the start to me.” Then I had to try to correct her impression of me as, what, callous? I’m not sure, by going on and on about how amazing it is how developed they are when they are so little, and she warmed up a bit, called my embryo/baby/whatever “cute” and likened its appearance to a “Teddy graham.”

I measured 8 weeks 3 days today. I am 8 weeks 6 days based on my LMP. Based on when I know I ovulated, I am 8 weeks exactly. Since the sonogram due date and the LMP due date are only three days apart, the OB office said it is going with the LMP date, meaning it is, in my opinion, nearly a week too early (they have me due October 10th). This bothers me mainly because they do not let you VBAC past your due date at my OB’s, so I want the latest due date that makes sense. A week makes a big difference, especially since people who are going through labor for the first time tend to go after their due date to begin with. So I’m going to have to tussle with them about that. I’m probably going to lose.

But based on some other stuff going on I am reluctant to change providers. Last Friday a nurse called me with my bloodwork test results, and told me everything was great. And then she told me, casually, that they want me to see a maternal-fetal specialist for high risk OB patients. Something about my blood clotting disorder. My–I have a what? Evidently, something in the bloodwork my RE originally did like five years ago showed some marker for some blood clotting thing (clearly I am very well-informed on this topic). This turned out not to be why I was infertile, but it did cause my OB to put me on baby aspirin for the duration of my previous pregnancy, something I am doing now with this one. The OBs were very nonchalant about it and I’m not sure I even knew it was for a blood-clotting disorder last time. No one said anything about perinatologists last time, either, so I don’t know why they are suddenly so concerned. But I’ll go see the specialists.

I also need to have a, we’ll say, serious discussion with the docs about my continuing my medication (Metformin for insulin resistance) throughout the pregnancy as opposed to stopping after the first trimester like they like, and which, in fact, I did not do until I was 20 weeks last time (which they knew). According to my super-awesome LC, a likely reason I had such insanely low milk supply was because I was off my Met for that second half of my pregnancy, and she had me go on it immediately post-partum. My prescribing doctor said I should take the Met throughout the pregnancy this time, too, and since I reallyreallyreally do not want to go through quite as unpleasant a breastfeeding experience, I would like to take the precaution of being on the Met continuously. They give it to women who have gestational diabetes (which I was not diagnosed with, but Little Girl was born 8.5 lbs. at 37 weeks, sooo) so I imagine it should be okay, even good for me for that reason, but I want to make sure it does not affect my risk for preeclampsia again, as something on the internet suggested it might.

Seeing all this written down makes me agree with the OBs about the high-risk referral. Which totally blows. I thought this time it would be so much less fraught. I’m quite a lot healthier starting out, for one thing. And in general I am less worried, yes. I do not check for blood every time I pee. I was, today, to be honest, much more worried there would be twins in there than there would be no heartbeat at all. My pregnancy symptoms can ebb and flow and, except for being on a sharp lookout for morning sickness (the fact that I am not currently throwing up as I type this indicates to me I am less pregnant than they say) don’t fret me if they go. But new things are coming up to worry me, instead. But that’s just how pregnancy goes, I guess. One long worry-fest.

March second we find out if our insurance stops covering the hospitals in our area. Looking forward to that. In the meantime, unintentionally, I’ve been using the crap out of the plan this week. My cold? Now a sinus infection. I actually was able to sleep most of the hours I attempted to last night (I didn’t get all bent out of shape about the cheerful bird calls out my window at 7 AM for the first time in a week!) and now I have antibiotics so I’m hoping that, altogether, at the end of it, I will have felt like crap for a maximum of ten days. That’s really all a person should be asked to endure.

Also, first OB visit; nothing to report, ultrasound next week, doctor brought up having a VBAC all on her own, told me in her opinion there’s no known way to reduce the risk of preeclampsia once you’ve had it other than get pregnant by a different father. Now she tells me. I was also really entertained with her fast monologue at the end, “You can breast or bottlefeed your baby. We recommend up to a 25-pound weight gain. You need a rear-facing car seat. If it’s a boy, you can request a circumcision. Here are some pamphlets about prenatal testing; let us know next week. They’re optional. These are the types of fish you can eat. etc. etc.” That could be pretty overwhelming and confusing if I didn’t already have informed opinions on these things.

In the various doctors’ waiting rooms (GP, OB, GP again), I realized we have a real diversity of caregivers–except that they are all female. My GP is a black woman and her partner is an Asian woman. Little Girl’s pediatricians are two Indian women. My main OB is a Middle Eastern woman. My dentist is a white man, though, so he can go ahead and represent the traditional medical patriarchy.

As for Little Girl, she just developed some weird red bumps across her chest and shoulder. I noticed them this afternoon, but given the extremely lax parenting I have been doing (let’s just say there is a bunch of deodorant rubbed on my walls and all the dishtowels have disappeared and I know these things and I do not care) they may have appeared earlier without notice. They’re not bothering her, so I hate to make yet another doctor’s appointment, so I’m gonna wait and see. I tried to get the new doc checking me out for my sinus infection to look at them but she was all, “I don’t know her medical history.” Um, she has no medical history. She’s two. She has weird bumps. What are they, lady? I think she was just pissed because somehow the tip I got from a parenting magazine to entertain your kid at the doctor’s by letting them draw on the paper on the examining table went wildly awry and, well, I think they’re gonna need to get that thing refurbished. I imagine all my copays will cover it.

Exactly how long is a cold supposed to last? Just a few days and then you start to get better, right? Then why am I still spending all my time blowing my nose and having miserable coughing fits, living off cough drops, and unable to sleep for more than a few hours a night, even though I turn off the lights at 9 PM? This is horrible. If I could just get some rest. Even when my cold isn’t keeping me up, it’s the goddamn cats. Not even just my own cats. When we were staying at my mom’s house, her stupid cat would take up meowing insanely every time I had a coughing fit, and now my own cats have this hateful new habit of scratching at the hall doors all motherfucking night long. I just need to get better. Would it be weird to reschedule my first OB appointment that’s tomorrow so I can stay home and be sick and continue poorly parenting my two-year-old at home by plying her with videos and pretzels so I can just lie down? I guess I’ll suck it up and go. The internet says I can take some cold medicines so maybe that will help. I am so sick. It sucks oh so much. The end.

I really am aiming not to talk too much about being pregnant, since there are few things more dull than other people’s bodily musings, plus, should all go well, this topic should drag on rather quite a while, but I am beyond exhausted. And also irritated and baffled that I am–is it possible?–starting to show at five weeks. Yesterday I went to take a “before” picture and realized that I was too late. The internet says this means I am: eating too much; gassy; having multiples (!); crazy; or just plain not pregnant for the first time. I don’t even know which one to wish for. I did show really early with Little Girl (like ten weeks) so I guess it’s possible, and I am short-waisted, but it still seems a bit ridiculous to me. Like my maternity clothes and other reproductive paraphernalia I loaned out, I haven’t gotten my pregnancy books back, but I think in the part where they compare the embryo to an item of food, it couldn’t be bigger than a sesame seed.

Anyway, in Husband’s continued absence we have been doing extremely well. Little Girl has worn panties four days in a row without incident, we have eaten nutritiously, the floors are mopped, we haven’t been lonely or bored, I cleaned out the attic and raked up all the leaves, and I am preparing for the end of the term of teaching (two months long at my university). Friday we’re off to care for my grandparents (I don’t even know what to think about the fact that my grandmother needs diapers more than my two-year-old) and Husband gets back Saturday, at which point he sweetly but stupidly plans to drive several hours to where we will be, not wanting to spend any more time away than necessary. Aww. But get some rest, dude. You know you’re not gonna sleep on that plane.

Facebook: I don’t get it. I am trying, but no. My interest in acquaintances’ quotidian activities is evidently extremely small. And my students keep trying to add me as a friend, which I do not think I want. Also, I think that’s kind of weird. I would never try to befriend my professors online. Guess I’m old.

Sooo…I have realized that my husband is in Paris on Valentine’s Day, and I am not. Hrm. He sent flowers and chocolate in the mail, which was nice, but I’d rather be included in the cameraphone pics he keeps sending us of his head in front of a variety of Parisian hallmarks. And I did not know this, but he is scared of heights, so he isn’t going to the top of the Eiffel Tower or anything. And he has a super-awesome telephoto lens with him! I feel a very wifely sort of irritation about this, but it’s his trip. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to do whatever you want. But still! The top of the Eiffel Tower is fantastic! You can see everything!

I’m not enjoying the horseback riding as much now. You really gotta be ballsy to get a lot out of it, and now with my, you know, new status, I’m just not. I guess it’s better to want to stop than have to stop.

Courtesy of what I remember from being pregnant with Little Girl as a lax immune system during gestation, I have a cold. My parenting is like 75% worse when I am sick. But she’s being sweet. She misses her daddy, though. We had that SAHD over for a playdate this week (fun, kind of like hanging out with my husband–we talked about potty training and hardwood flooring) and Little Girl kept hugging his knees, and then informing him that HER daddy was in BELGIUM for WORK on an AIRPLANE! Emphatic.

If you use Bloglines (as I do) please be aware that it can take sometimes 12, sometimes 24 hours for it to notice I have a new post. Honestly this keeps me posting as much as I otherwise would because a) I like to have my posts spaced a day apart or so at least, and b) if I have some more immediate issue, it’s frustrating to have to wait a day to get feedback, so sometimes I’ll just not bother. Apparently this is a known problem about some WordPress sites but they just don’t care to fix it. Oh well.

With Husband away I’ve been trying to keep us nice and busy and I think I’ve overdone it. Every day we’ve had something like three or four major activities.

Monday: Hosted craft playgroup for my mothers’ group, playdate at park, store
Tuesday: Worked, restaurant, playdate, first-time visitor free Gymboree class (eh)
Wednesday: Playdate, insanely long conference call, horseback riding, store
Thursday: Playdate, work, performance review meeting with boss (good)

I mean, really. And every night I work for several hours. I guess the workouts on the horse (and maybe being still, as far as I know, pregnant) are also tiring me out a bunch, and I am putting a huge amount of effort into my diet, and I am a bit overwhelmed. Tomorrow we have only one thing on the calendar (horse) and nothing at all concrete for the weekend, and so maybe I can get some laundry done as well as some important sitting around.

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Hey, Husband will be spending the weekend in Paris. I am beyond jealous. I have my own suggestions for where he should go but I’ve only been there once for 36 hours (though I absolutely made the most of them) and am no expert. Any tips on Paris? He wants to see the highlights and do some photography. Below the cut are my own notes on Paris I sent him.

Eiffel Tower (get there early in the morning, no lines)

Notre Dame

Arc de Triomphe (taxi took us by via Champs-Élysées–two birds with one stone!)

Make sure you pass along the Seine (it runs right through the city; pretty bridges). We ate at a cafe by the river. Nice.

Sainte-Chapelle cathedral (gorgeous huge stained-glass windows)

Moulin Rouge (saw show at night, half-naked ladies, not as fun as it seemed, but good street vendor food outside)

We had dinner in the Latin Quarter. French onion soup and fondue! Just asked a taxi to take us to a nice place. Then bar. Your hotel can also recommend.

The Louvre–really big; we just saw everything on the way to the Mona Lisa and on the way out. I also recommend finding the Venus of Samothrace.

Near there pass the gardens–Tuileries

Pere Lachaise Cemetery; look for Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. We didn’t buy a map and had to bum off other people. Was fun, like a scavenger hunt.

The catacombs. Creepy.

The subway’s easy, the people are nice and helpful, especially if they think you are not American (my friend and I spoke Spanish all the time for this reason). Try different languages. I ended up breaking out the Portuguese with one taxi driver.

There are no toilets in France, so be forewarned.