now try this...

after returning home from the hospital empty-handed...oh yes, there was the teddy bear that was supposed to take the place of our baby...i had quite a road to tread. i spent the first week crying. there was a point in those first few days that i had eyes so black it looked as if i had been beaten in an alley somewhere. j went back to work after a week. i stayed home for three more after that. it was hell. pure hell.

but then life began to go on. i went back to the doc for a check up after 4 weeks. she said go ahead and try again if you are emotionally ready. we were. but then i started spotting. i went back to the doc. this doc (the one who had been there to catch when i delivered coop) asked if i was breastfeeding. what the fuck? is she fucking serious. it was six weeks ago. you watched my baby die ten minutes after i delivered him and you can't remember. don't you look at charts? i think that was when i first began hating doctors.

we waited another month so i could have an u/s to make sure all was clear. it was and we started the journey. remember, it only took three months last time. this would be no problem. we would be on the road to second-time-parenthood in no time. months passed. i bought every book about fertility i could find. we tried everything. i mean everything but the egg whites. after five months i knew something was wrong with me. something got screwed up in the process of carrying and delivering cooper. we went to see an RE.

nope. nothing is wrong with me. they tested me for everything. nothing. two more months. no luck. let's check j. somehow over the course of the pregnancy a vein had taken over in the sperm-making zone and we were not only qualified to attend "my baby died" support groups, but we could also attend "we can't make babies easily on our own" groups. wow. how things had changed. in the course of six months, what a new perspective we had on life.

two months of IUI. nothing but tears. and stress. and hatred. then we decided "why waste our time on this since according to the docs it probably won't work anyway and let's just take the plunge and move to IVF -- the mother of all IF treatments.

in the meantime, i had tried everything. applied kinesiology. ayurvedic herbs. acupuncture. supplements. eveing primrose oil. preseed. chinese herbs. meditation. yoga. everything. and nothing happened. i cried a lot. we fought a lot. but we didn't make a baby.

december 2008 -- began our first IVF cycle. january 19 -- egg retrieval. i had acupuncture leading up to it. two treatments that day. drank the chinese herbs. they got 11 eggs. i think. 9 fertilized. 7 made it overnight. in the end we had five. five little babies in the making sitting in an incubator all alone in a dark fertility center. january 23 -- transferred one blast. froze 3. then we waited. february 1 -- cooper's bday. february 2 -- we're pregnant. perfect timing for once.

who gives a sh--?

i have always wondered what draws a person to write a blog. why post information on the internet for everyone to read? it's no so much the privacy that boggled my mind, it was the who-the-hell-cares concept that i couldn't get past. why would someone want to read about a person's daily activities? is my life so boring that i have to check in on yours?

then i made a new friend. a "net friend", shall we say? she is a friend of a friend who is also an IF-survivor. two years. two long years she has been trying to make a baby. and her story helped me feel more sane and more connected to real people with real struggles. wait a minute. i was already connected to the real people in my grief support group. a group in which the parents met twice a month to share our feelings about how much we HATED pregnant people and how much we longed to have our little babies back in our arms. real people. together. in real life. in a room. not on the internet. so what brings me here?

another friend is a blogger. you know, one of the people i used to wonder about. who cares about the progress of your wedding planning? we have all planned weddings. it's really not that exciting to anyone but you. and now you want to share with everyone the daily goings-on of your pregnancy. we have all been pregnant. well, not all of us. some of us hate those of you who can just have babies. you know who you are. "it worked on the first try" or even better "we weren't even trying"...yeah. must be f-ing nice. so who the f wants to hear about that? don't you know that making a baby and actually carrying a baby until it's ready to be in this world is a total god-damned miracle. show some appreciation of that miracle and keep the shit off the web. christ.

but yes, here i am writing a blog about my pregnancy. i still feel angry that people share their little stories about the miracle of birth when they really have no clue what a miracle it truly is. and i laugh at their adventures in baby-land...you know what i'm talking about. babies-r-us and buy-buy-baby and baby-depot and whatever other warehouse names people have come up with for the business of baby-making. it actually enrages me to the point that i want to tell them all about it. but if i ever do they won't get it. they will just chalk me up as being wounded and bruised and feel so sorry for me and wish their was a support group for weirdos like me.

we're 15 weeks and 6 days pregnant today. again. this time last year i was tracking my fertility charts wondering why the hell it hadn't happened yet. cooper was born in february. at 22 weeks and 3 days. too early. he could breathe. he breathed. he snuggled. he slept on mommy's chest for his whole life with daddy stroking his head. i told him how sorry i was. it as all so wrong. so fucking wrong.




so here's how it started.
july '06 -- went in to school in the summer to meet the new guy and help him with curriculum. pretty cool guy. he had tattoos and earrings so i knew we would be just fine.
october '06 -- first kiss, already planning to make babies together.
november '06 -- bought a condo, living together.
january '07 -- engaged. can't wait to marry this guy, it seems as if we've been married since we met.
april '07 -- no more BCPs. we'll start trying when that nasty chemical is out of my system.
september '07 -- getting married in two months. and -- guess what? we're pregnant. and "it only took us three months". no problem. this having a baby thing is going to be easy.
november '07 -- we're married. contracted pneumonia on our honeymoon. was in the hospital. sick for a month with my little boy along for the ride. but he was just fine. no sweat. nothing to worry about.
january 31, 2008, 1:27 PM -- my membranes ruptured. i was 22 weeks and 2 days pregnant. right smack in the middle of the second trimester. no one worries during the second trimester. because "once you hear a heartbeat as strong as that, there is less than a 1% chance anything will go wrong" (docs LOVE percentages, especially when they make ya feel good). it's actually referred to as preterm PROM. preterm premature rupture of the membranes.
february 1, 2008 -- the best and worst day of our lives. cooper thomas was born. i got an infection. of course i did. since my water had broken a speculum and i think three other hands had entered my vagina. were they trying to make me go into labor? but hell, what did we know? they induced. oh, we're so sorry, we're going to have to induce she said with her hands over her mouth. she was really sorry. and she should have been. they all should have been. i should have been. i didn't know any better. how the hell didn't i know any better. this making of a baby is a god-damned miracle and it needs to be protected. i should have learned more. i should have taken more responsibility for knowing everything that was going on. i shouldn't have believed that an OB knows everything about pregnancy and childbirth. i should have stayed out of the fucking hospital. so he was born and i was medicated so i couldn't bathe him or dress him even once. we held him and we cried and we apologized because he really got screwed.

february 2 and beyond -- we began learning our lessons from cooper.