The memo

MEMO

To: The Universe
From: DaniGirl
Re: Messing with my head

Dear Universe,

Thank you for an exciting first week of September. Sending my eldest son off to meet his kindergarten teacher for the first time would have been more than enough excitement for a single week, and yet you were kind enough to add the pregnancy adventure to that.

You could have stopped there. Really, that would be more than enough to keep a girl awake nights, pondering mini-vans and bedroom arrangements and parenting three children under six.

And yet, you didn’t quite thing that was enough. You decided to mess with my head just a little bit more. I think maybe you are playing a cosmic game of “let’s see how far she bends before she snaps” and you’re about to win.

Yes, I’m talking about the blood test results. The blood test results that, at 3491, seem inordinately high for me to be just five weeks pregnant. Yes, I realize that a high beta number is an indicator of a good, strong pregnancy, and for that I am extremely grateful.

But there’s that other thing. That thing about how a high beta can also mean multiples. And you know that my father was a twin, his father was a twin, and my mother’s father was a twin.

The clinic won’t be doing an ultrasound for another two weeks, which leaves me to stew in my own speculative juices for what seems like an eternity. Because universe, I really think it’s a bit twisted if you find the idea of twins is funny.

Anxiously,
DaniGirl

Details, details

*pinch*

*pinch*

*pinch*

Nope, not dreaming. I keep waiting to wake up, to shake it off, to have someone explain that I’m the butt of some cosmic joke. But so far, so good. (whispers, touching wood) I’m still pregnant.

And yes, you can expect about nine more months of this.

So I imagine there are a few of you out there who would like some details on this. Well, here’s the scoop. Beloved and I hadn’t exactly decided to try or not to try after frostie didn’t work out. Beloved wasn’t opposed to the idea of a third child per se, but he was nervous about the idea of trying again. So we didn’t exactly try, in the way we did before Tristan was conceived, but we were both rather aware of my reproductive timing during the month.

It took me a couple of weeks to get over the loss of frostie’s potential, which was the most sad and painful part of the cycle not working out. To be completely honest with you, it all seems like aeons ago, and I can’t believe it’s only been a little over a month since we found out it didn’t work out. We had our few sad days, but it was very easy to come to terms with the outcome because of my unwavering conviction that everything happens for a reason. And I had really made peace with the idea of only having two children in my life. I had even started to think about packing up my old maternity stuff, and some of my most sentimental baby things.

You might remember that the cycle ended on my birthday, August 1. So when September 1 rolled around and I still hadn’t had a visit from “Aunt Flo”, I started getting annoyed. Not curious, and not excited, because I was absolutely positive it was just my body messing with my head again. I was a full week late back in May, too, and that turned out to be nothing, so I figured this was, too.

As the weekend progressed, I started paying more and more attention to the toilet paper again, and really started to wonder. Finally, I decided Sunday night to take one of my leftover pregnancy tests on Monday morning not because I thought I was pregnant, but because I wanted to quell the swells of anxious curiousity that were starting to build. I had no indications whatsoever from my body that I might be pregnant – no sore boobs, no nausea, no aversions, nothing. And so even though I was giving in to the test, I was completely expecting a single line.

It was just a little bit before six o’clock in the morning, and Simon had already been up for an hour. When he first woke a little before five, I was surprised to be able to convince him to stay in his crib for another half hour, listening to his lullaby CD. He had been in my bed with me, kicking and turning and tossing like a landed trout when I finally gave up and let him get up. I had almost forgotten the foil pack with the test in it that I had put on the counter the night before, and almost put it back under the sink because I just didn’t feel like dealing with the negative test that early in the morning. But I couldn’t stand the niggling voice of possibility whispering in my subconscious.

I watched the pink tint race up the stick, first triggering the test line – and then the other test line. And I thought, in a rather uninspired moment, “Hey, there aren’t supposed to be two test lines.” I was gobsmacked.

By the time I made it downstairs, Beloved was putting on a Doodlebops DVD for Simon. My hand was shaking so badly he could barely see the tiny stick I was thrusting at him. We collapsed onto the couch in a daze, and Simon laughed obliviously at the TV.

The difference between a third (technically, a fourth) pregnancy and a first is that for the first, you will leap tall buildings to get a blood test for that early empirical confirmation of your pregnancy. This morning, however, I found myself asking, “Oh crap, do I have to go for a blood test? Is that required? When the heck am I going to have time to go for a blood test?” I called the fertility centre, because while I’m rather unexcited about the blood test, I really would like an early ultrasound. The nurse who took my call scolded me for not coming in for my scheduled beta test after the frostie cycle failed, saying it makes it harder to know for sure now when this pregnancy actually started. I know, I reassured her. I know. And so, having done her duty by scolding me, she told me to come on in for a test Tuesday morning, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

So if all goes according to plan, it will be a spring baby – maybe the end of April or the beginning of May. And as of today (thumping wildly on nearby wooden surfaces) I’m five weeks pregnant.

A special request

Some day, my complete inability to keep my personal life off the Interweb will come back to bite me in the ass.

Every now and then, I will be telling a story to a colleague of mine at work, and they will say, “Oh yes, I read all about that on your blog. So and so gave me the link.” I have no idea how many of you are reading, but I’m beginning to suspect it’s more than I thought!

So while I’m happy to have you reading, could I please ask that you keep our little secret just between you, me and the world wide web? With one notable exception, I’m not sure I’m ready to share this little tidbit with the management just yet.

Thanks!

Announcing….

Back in the day, when we were trying to conceive for the first time, I spent an inordinate amount of time dreaming up ways to announce my pregnancy. First, I was going to tell everyone in the thank you cards I sent out for our wedding gifts, then I was going to tell everyone at Thanksgiving, then I dreamt of announcing it in our Christmas cards that year. I imagined telling Beloved for his birthday in December, pictured announcing it on Christmas Eve, and even thought that the news might make a lovely birthday gift for my mother in February.

Needless to say, I was foiled every time. Those were the dark days of infertility.

And then with Tristan, because everybody knew we were going through the in vitro treatment, although there was a lot of joy involved in announcing his conception and my pregnancy, we had lost the element of surprise.

That’s why announcing my pregnancy with Simon was such fun. It was as much a shock to us as it was to the rest of the world, and I had fun playing with the element of surprise.

With frostie last month, it was fun to once again be dreaming up all kinds of ways to announce to you all that I was pregnant … right up until I took the test that turned out to be negative (and my period arrived like – well, like a period at the end of that sentence).

All this to say, I’ve spent more time than the average girl thinking about innovative ways to announce a pregnancy. And yet, when I really need some inspiration, my mind is completely blank. My muse has left the building.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

How about that? I’m pregnant!

The overnight stay

It’s Sunday morning, and the house is silent. I can hear the clock ticking in the next room and the rain spattering the window. I am completely unsettled by the silence.

The boys, both of them, spent last night with Granny and Papa Lou. It was the first time they both stayed over together, although Tristan has stayed over a few times before. They were, of course, beside themselves with excitement as we got ready to go over yesterday after dinner. I dropped them off, and they barely noticed when I left. Papa Lou had already set up the DVD player with their favourite movie, and Granny was in the kitchen preparing a snack tray. I knew they were in good hands.

Because Beloved is swamped with work and behind with his lesson plans, he elected to stay home while I went out for a movie with a friend. (The Illusionist – a terrific movie, except I kept waiting for Edward Norton to say, “I am Jack’s broken heart.”) When I got home the house was palpably emptier, and I had to convince myself not to go and look in on their empty beds just before I went to bed myself.

I just called over to see how things went. My mother has the boys out at WalMart, but my father said that it had gone reasonably well. “They were up at four thirty,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“For the DAY?” I asked, cringing. “That’s a little early!”

“Hmmm, I thought so, too,” he said, with barely concealed irony.

Oh well. Maybe my folks will be willing to try again when they’re teenagers and sleeping until noon…