Happy Halloween!

Looking Back

So, I know what you're all thinking. This blog started out with such promise, and here it is left unupdated and unloved for more than two weeks! I know everyone says this, but we have been busy! I just finished up a huge project for work, Jim just survived the flu (after having a flu shot) and I have been dealing with a little lupus flare. I am now happy to say that everyone in our house is healthy, knock on wood! We have had a great weekend, too. We went to a fun little sandwich shop in our 'hood Friday night, and then on Saturday morning, we walked in the Alliance for Lupus Research's Walk to raise money and awareness for lupus research. This is the third year in a row I have taken part, and it gets better every year. This year, the Walk raised more than $76,000!

This year was a little sentimental to me because the day before last year's Walk, I found out I was pregnant with the baby who is now snoring in her crib in the next room. I remember being terrified, especially since we had lost a baby just three months earlier. I also remember feeling like I had the best secret ever. As I walked the three mile course, it was fun to know that my baby was already walking with me, even if she was the size of a popcorn kernel in my belly. There was a little person growing inside of me who was desperately wanted and already loved. From the start, I had a good feeling about the pregnancy, but I had also had no clue what was about to happen over the next nine months. It was lovely to be so optimistic.

At Walk time last year, I was working full-time at a hectic, frenzied pace. I was not really happy in my job, but I was working at a place that I believed in, so I overlooked the things I didn't like so that I could still get that warm and fuzzy feeling every morning when I went to work. I never really saw my husband, except for when we both collapsed into bed every night. We were so consumed with grieving over our loss that we never really woke up everyday. It was sad and hard and mostly awful. It was an early loss, but it still sucked, and it didn't help that people kept saying, "Oh, but at least it happened early." I understood what they meant, but I didn't feel that way. I have often said that when you lose a baby so early in a pregnancy (I was 9-ish weeks), that it's hard to know what you're grieving for. I think I hit the nail on the head, for me at least, when I said that I was mourning the loss of potential. We lost what could have been, and it was sad.

What I mean by that is that the moment I found out I was pregnant in the bathroom of a San Francisco hotel, what was growing inside me held so much hope. My husband and I immediately saw a life in those two pink lines. In the few short weeks between the positive pregnancy test and the damning ultrasound that showed a heart that had ceased to beat, we had imagined a whole life with our child. We had talked about names and nursery decor, Saturday mornings spent mending scraped knees after soccer games, Halloween costumes made by Grandma and Christmas morning spent around a tree that we had all decorated together. We imagined blonde hair and blue eyes, summers spent sunburnt and lazy August Sundays rocking on the dock. We had heard his or her laughter ring through our home and we had watched our beloved dog Murphy pull her down the street. We had mentally seen this baby go to his or her first day of school, then to college and then walk down the aisle. Yes, as crazy as it might seem, in those few short weeks, we had imagined a whole life. So when we cried, it wasn't for the bundle of cells that had multiplied, per se. It was for the things that would never happen, the baby we would never know, the person who would never become. It was because we loved someone we could never touch or hold. It was because surprise or not, we wanted this baby and all of the things he or she would become. We really wanted it all.

The doctors took a lot of blood in the weeks that followed our miscarriage and ran what they call a thrombophilia panel. They found that I had a clotting disorder which affected the way I clotted blood (clotted too much) and metabolized folic acid (not well enough). Both of these things could make carrying a baby challenging. Add the clotting disorder to my already existing lupus and we had a rodeo on our hands.

So, on Sept. 29, I found out I was again pregnant. Let's just look beyond the embarrassing reality that I found out I was pregnant in a Target bathroom. I was so sure I was pregnant, but had to know immediately. More on my lack of patience later. I took my lunch hour to go to Target and buy a pregnancy test. I didn't have time to go home and take it, so I went into the bathroom at Target and proceeded take the test. Needless to say, I passed the test (or failed, depending on your desires when you take the test) and saw a faint second pink line. The Saturdays, the Halloweens, the Christmases, the August Sundays. God willing, we'd have the chance at them all.

I would like to tell you that I am one of those women who got a positive pregnancy test and then voila! nine months (really, 10 months) later, I had a perfect baby. I did have a perfect baby nine months later (not 10, nine), but it wasn't a voila! experience. Every day of my pregnancy, in spite of having good feelings about it, I was scared. In fact, I was terrified. Every time I had a doctor's appointment, I would be sick to my stomach the morning of. And I mean, sick. Bleccchhhh. At seven weeks, I had my first appointment with my perinatalogist and saw Claire's heartbeat (see ultrasound picture). I never knew such a tiny flicker would end up being one of the most precious sites I'd ever seen. I had an ultrasound, some times two, nearly every week until she was born to make sure everything was progressing normally. Because of some first trimester issues, I ended up leaving my job. Stress on top of fear made me an awful employee, and since both of my bosses admittedly hated kids, their sympathy was not by any measure overwhelming. My state of mind plus their lack of understanding proved explosive -- and even landed me in the emergency room with bleeding at 14 weeks. For the first time since I was 15, I was unemployed. So what did I do? I got another job in spite of everyone's pleading that I just take it easy.

As the days passed, I got bigger, and my blood pressure got higher and higher. After an overnight hospital stay, I was put on bed rest with 14 weeks left in my pregnancy. I can hardly sit still ever, so bed rest was my own personal nightmare. Again, I had to quit my job. Admittedly, I was a non-compliant patient, and at 34 weeks, I was admitted to the hospital. My lupus was misbehaving, and I was in some nasty pain. This time, I was told, I wasn't going to be leaving without a baby. My nose was swollen all the way across my face, and a very hateful nurse told me I had hobbit feet. The prednisone they gave me for my joint pain made my blood sugar high, so they put me on a diabetic diet. Ever seen a hungry pregnant lady? My wonderful husband spent two weeks sneaking in food for me. Further proof I had married the right man.

The day I turned 36 weeks pregnant, they performed an amniocentesis to check for Claire's lung maturity. Eight long hours later, the results were in. Baby had (and still has) a strong pair of pipes! They induced me the next morning, and finally, I got my voila!

So, yesterday, just a few weeks more than a full year after finding out I was pregnant with Claire, we walked three miles together. We walked because we could, because we had already done it together once. I have never been prouder.

How Did I End Up With a Baby This Cute?

Just posting these because I think she's cute. I can't believe she's almost five months old!

I Just Miss Her

This is me and my sweet sister in San Francisco on vacation last year.

In January, my sister and her husband moved to Ghana. He is an anthropological film maker who is working there, and she is a school teacher and counselor to children there. I was 18 weeks pregnant when she left, so the shit had not officially hit the fan yet in my pregnancy. In the weeks that followed, there was bleeding, then a car accident, then pre-eclampsia and then I had a nasty lupus flare -- more on that later. I was hospitalized twice, the last time for two weeks until they induced me at 36 weeks. During this time, even though my sister was a zillion miles away, we managed to communicate by any means possible. We would e-mail, text message and every once in awhile she would call me. I always loved saying hello and hearing a delay in a response because I knew it was her calling from a world away. There were times when I would have a doctor's appointment, good or bad, and the only person I really wanted to talk to was her. She delighted in me telling her about my pregnancy and loved hearing whether we'd heard the heartbeat or how much the baby weighed now when they measured her on ultrasound. When I told her I was scared or that I didn't think I would make it through the stress of this pregnancy, she would simply, say "Kerry, I can't imagine what you're going through." She never tried to one up me or say, "Well, my friend who was pregnant this one time, blah, blah, blah." She just listened.

With the help of modern technology, she knew within minutes of Claire's birth, and I was even able to send her a picture via text message. I felt like she was with me. Until now, I have never really known what it felt like to really, truly miss someone. I never knew it could physically hurt to miss a person. Well, it does. As much as I know it's a good thing for her to be with her husband in Ghana, and as much as I know the school children she is teaching need her more than I do, I am just selfish enough to really wish she'd show up on my doorstep tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, too. I just miss her.

Life Affirmation in the Baby Gap

Have you ever had one of those defining moments when you least expect it that just really illustrates to you that you have indeed chosen the right life? I had one of those moments this past Sunday.

I am generally happy with my life. I am married to a man who I am more in love with than I ever thought possible, and Claire has just made my life. I have a great career that allows me to keep my foot in the workforce while staying at home with my child. I have awesome friends, and wonderful siblings. I know all of these things, but sometimes as the days and weeks pass, I kind of let my mind wander to what my life might have been like had I made different decisions. Those thoughts are never in regret of the choices I did make...more just out of curiosity.

So, on Sunday, I just really needed some time to myself, so Jim agreed to hang out with Claire while I did my thing. As it turns out, doing my thing was going to pick out some Fall clothes for Claire, so I sped out to Lenox Square to find some duds. My first stop was Gymboree where I was unimpressed, so I moved on to Baby Gap. I was sifting through some baby yoga pants (ummm...do babies do yoga, and if so, do they really need separate pants for it?) when I heard a really familiar Southern voice. I turned to place the voice and then I saw him. I hadn't seen him in five and a half years since we'd gone to lunch after his much belated graduation from the University of Georgia. I hadn't seen him since we'd realized that yes, this time it was really over. No, there wasn't someone else, but there was me...and that's who I was trying to hold on to. It was my college ex-boyfriend who I will call Heath Denkins. And his mother. And his very pregnant wife. And I was alone. Without my husband. And without my baby. In my fat jeans.

I said hello to him and he looked at me as if he could kill me for even thinking to shop in the same store as him. His mother hugged my neck, and as she shouted my name, Heath's wife (Lauren?) screeched around the rack of onesies to see who this female voice belonged to. I saw her swollen belly and congratulated her -- them -- and told them that I had a daughter at home. Claire. Heath's response was, "you have a baby?" like he was destroyed that I had gotten there first. I wanted to tell him that it had been hard, and I had been sick and that I deserved to get there, not necessarily first, but just because it hadn't been easy. But, I didn't. I just overcompensated for the awkwardness by chattering incessantly. I told them I had just gone back to work and that I loved it, but that it was hard to manage everything. It's really not all that hard, but people want to hear that it's hard so that's what's I tell them. I asked his wife (Laura?) if she was planning on going back to work, and she told me that she didn't work and hadn't since they got married a few years ago. Oh. My mind immediately shifted seven years back to my studying in Heath's craphole apartment when he told me I didn't have to study to do well in school because I'd never have to work if I just stuck with him. I'd just have babies and keep the home. I broke up with him a week later.

So then instead of taking that opportunity to leave the Baby Gap like we all know I should have, I asked if they were going to deliver at Northside. For you non-Atlantans, Northside is a fantastic hospital to deliver, especially for high risk pregnancies. It has great providers, boasts wonderful outcomes and offers a well-established special care nursery -- all things that had to exist in order for me to deliver there. His wife explained that no, they lived in Jefferson, Georgia, and they'd be delivering there. They lived in the country. They asked where we live. The city, I said.

I realized that Claire didn't need any yoga pants, so I wished them luck, wished Mrs. Denkins a happy birthday since I'd just remembered it was her birthday and got out of there as soon as I could. I didn't go to any other stores. I just left the mall. I wanted to leave the man that I almost never left to get home to the man I almost never met. I couldn't drive fast enough. On my way home, I of course called all of my girlfriends who'd been there through my Heath era and made it to my Jim era. They all laughed and agreed that I was totally validated in breaking into a cold sweat and sprouting hives. We also agreed that maybe I should shower and dry my hair before visiting the mall. Whoops.

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and picked up a carrot cake so that Jim and I could celebrate our right decisions. It was delicious -- our life and the cake.

And yes, I know I was younger, tanner, thinner and blonder in the picture to the right. Everyone is younger, tanner, thinner and blonder on their wedding day.