I haven’t been publishing very much lately, although I write almost every day. I just am so personally bored by my own feelings I feel guilty subjecting my readings to them. So, for today I thought I’d just give a run down of the facts and see where that leads.

1. Number of weeks: 26. We’re getting very close to the safety zone and feeling more confident. My brain seems to have finally exhausted itself from fretting, so I’m able to be more enthusiastic about a baby really arriving and coming home with us. We started getting the baby’s room organized and are both reading baby books. Ramona has been napping more in preparation for her new duties as baby guard dog.

2. How I Feel Physically: Surprisingly shitty. My round ligament pain continues to be pretty oppressive. My giant belly causes me back pain and prevents me from shaving my legs. My atrophying muscles leave me with a haunting phantom pain…like someone who lost a limb, only I lost my manly biceps. Complaining about my physical symptoms makes me have occasional teary melt downs, because I wish I was a blissful pregnant lady. I don’t let it get me too far down though, because I don’t think my baby is going to hold it against me. On the upside, my skin and hair look lovely! If they weren’t attached to a gigantically fat head, I could totally be a model.

3. What’s The Baby’s Name?: We don’t know. There are a lot of names we really like, but I don’t think we’ve found her name yet.

4. How’s Living With Your Parents Going?: It’s actually going well. It’s been really easy so far and we’re enjoying having the support. As much as I sometimes get my hackles up over people being protective, in the end it does make me feel more secure and I think takes some pressure off of Tom when he’s away at school. Also, the suburbs are a dream sleeping environment for an insomniac- no screaming drunks, no ambulances, no honking cars. Pretending to be neat and tidy housekeepers might end up actually turning us into real neat and tidy housekeepers, but I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.

Well that’s all I got so far. Baby Girl is kicking and kicking, which I think is a signal that she wants a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich.

Every week a nurse comes to my office to give me a shot of Progesterone (I get the P17 shot), check my vitals and check the baby’s vitals. It’s a nice 15 minutes where I get to purge all my worries and chit chat about my various body functions with someone who is both interested and soothing. Yesterday we were sitting in an empty room at work listening to the baby’s heart beat, and I heard something.

Or more accurately, I didn’t hear something.

I looked at my nurse but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I didn’t hear it again. The baby had skipped two heart beats. “Did you hear that?” I finally asked.

“Yes, I heard it. It’s very common and usually something that corrects itself upon delivery” she replied, almost TOO calm. “I don’t want you to worry too much, but I’m going to call your doctor and let him know.” She took away the sonogram and wiped the clear gel from my belly.

“Ok, I won’t worry. I’m really too busy about the baby staying in to cook long enough. I don’t have the mental capacity to worry about her little heart too.” I gave a hollow sounding bark of a laugh.

“Good. Okay. I’ll call your doc, he might have you come in to monitor the heartbeat or do an ultrasound of the heart, but really this is very very common.” She started packing up her things in earnest and I tried out my new mantra:
I’m not worrying. I’m not worrying.

I called my support system of women who would make sure I did the right thing: My mother, my sister in law, and my best friend. The followed my lead and acted calm, but I could sense the concern in their voices. All three gently insisted I go see the doctor, all three would hold me to it. They knew that I’d try and make light of the situation. It’s been easier keep my head buried in the sand than to consider the possibilities of disasters.

About 15 minutes after she left my doctor’s office called. I told them that while I wasn’t worried, but I had already told my mother that we heard two dropped heartbeats. The nurse laughed and said “well we better bring you in to give your mother some peace of mind!”

We scheduled a non-stress test for that afternoon (a non-invasive test to monitor the baby’s movement, heartbeat, etc). Then, I started worrying. After a few more minutes I started WORRYING. I worried about my job, my family, my husband, my child, my friends…I worried that more bad news would destroy them all over again. I worried about that little sweet girl growing inside of me, maybe in pain, maybe scared.

The test was a cinch. They just hooked a monitor up to my belly and listened to the baby for an hour. They didn’t observe anymore abnormalities and sent me home until my next appointment. In celebration, baby girl spent the afternoon and evening marching back and forth in my belly.

I laid awake in bed with my hands over my stomach feeling her roll and pitch like a little boat in the sea. I was so grateful for another day. One more day with her cooking safely inside of me. One more day closer to meeting this precious person.

Today is the last day that my pregnancy will be a link to Tommy Jr. I am 24 weeks and 5 days- this is the day I went into labor with my darling Baby Boy. Tomorrow, Baby Girl and I will start a whole new adventure- one that’s just hers and mine. As the younger sister of two high achieving brothers, I know sometimes it’s fun to have something that’s just yours alone and not overshadowed by what your brothers did. Tommy Jr will always be a part of our family, and will be her big brother, but these next couple of months are going to be all new for everyone.

I brought my mom to my ultra-sound today. I was nervous to have her see me so nervous…I guess I’ve kidded myself into thinking that my family and friends think I’m calm and hopeful. The whole drive downtown I heard myself talking loudly and braying with laughter at the slightest joke. I did strange things like refused to double check the floor number or where the parking garage was- that bought me a few extra minutes. Eventually we found ourselves in the darkened room. Then there was that moment in every ultrasound where I think- is this the point where I have to confront disaster?

This appointment was disaster-free. It was even happiness-full.

It was nice having my mom there with me. She was excited and happy and had fun…it’s pretty impossible to be really scared when the person you’re with is having a ball. Tom and I are cautiously optimistic about our daughter reaching full term. My mother is matter-of-factly optimistic, and it sort of felt like a relief to let that rub off on me.

So here we are, somewhere completely different. I didn’t expect the arrival and passing of this day to be so visceral. October 28th I’ll be 30 weeks pregnant, and I think everything will change again. 30 weeks is safety, and with safety I hope some relief from the undercurrent of fret that hums just below my skin.

It’s almost bedtime now. I made it past today. I just have to go to bed and wake up every day until October 28th. Then I’ll figure out what to do next.

Welcome to the high-anxiety zone! Here you will find every twinge, every hunger pang, every fart to be cause for great alarm! It is a magical place where you demand that everyone freak out as much as you are, then criticize these same people for thinking you can’t take care of yourself! Your friends and family will undoubtedly find this very charming and sweet. This is so undoubted that you might as well not bother asking anyone how neurotic and annoying you’re being, you should just assume everyone loves it!

Take this time to try and force long detailed discussions about vaginal discharge and bowel movements on such eager participants as your dad, the Fed Ex guy, and any co-worker foolish enough to dial your extension. Remember to rage on these same people if they don’t give you the exact right response. Demand that your husband take you to Homer’s for cheese fries and homemade ice cream, then whine the whole way home that you’ll probably get gestational diabetes because he’s so damn indulgent. When he suggests eating healthy, accuse him of thinking you’re fat.

The high-anxiety zone will allow you to feel completely put upon when your friends want to make plans with you, and completely left out when they stop calling. Blame the former on them not understanding what you’re going through, and the latter on them not understanding what you’re going through. If your friends have babies, act very creepy around them: insist on holding them way too long, stare into their eyes and whisper “you’re MY baby, I love you the MOST”, change their diapers and clothes when their mother isn’t looking and imply that you did it because you and the baby have a special way of communicating.

When you feel a twinge in your belly, tell everyone around you to SHUT UP while you try and figure out what it is. Further assume that no one minds that you do this, especially when on conference calls for work or in line at the Gap. When the twinge turns out to be loud and malodorous gas, expect everyone to praise you for passing it.

Know that the high-anxiety zone is finite, and that by week 30 (October 28th) it will be safe to feel more relaxed. Know that most of your friends will forgive you, and that your family is healthfully ignoring most of your antics. Be relieved that your husband’s love is so unconditional.

We write our blogs because we don’t know what else to do. The pain of loss feels like it’s cooking our insides and dissolving our souls. We recall the dramatic images we used in our teen aged diaries. Now we understood the phantom pain we felt during puberty. It was a warning, a conditioning- our pubescence was practice for our gory adulthood.

“I can’t even understand what you’re going through” you say, as a matter of comfort. So we keep writing, keep tearing ourselves open, hoping that you’ll understand if we say it just the right way.

We watch with unsurprised horror while you show us how much you don’t understand. We hear you talk about us to other friends, expressing sympathy and murmuring praise for our strength. But you want us all better and you want us to be the same people we were before. Our tears make you excited and uncomfortable.

Time passes slower than we expected. We remember other people dear to us suffering tragedy and feel guilty because we didn’t understand. None of understand pain until we understood it. Then we tried to write more.

Our firsts posts about happiness makes us feel guilty. We think our little ghosts cry in agony at our happiness. The first few incidents are followed by a depression almost darker than the few weeks right after our babies died. As much as we needed to move on, we didn’t want to. We couldn’t stop ourselves it seemed, even with drugs and alcohol and self indulgence…we were going to move on instead of dying. Although sometimes we just wanted to die.

In our blogs was a secret world. They were as dark and horrible as we wanted to be, but we were afraid of what our friends and coworkers and family would say. We hated to scare people, but you said yourself you couldn’t understand. So we hid it away on our blogs, and we knew the people who didn’t want to be near our pain would be satisfied with our fake smiles and hollow laughter.

Eventually some of us got pregnant again. We didn’t know what to say on our blogs, where so many of us struggled with infertility or were still mourning empty arms. We didn’t know how to feel ourselves about the new life inside of us- better not to be too hopeful, not to get too attached. This time our hearts were weaker and they might not heal another time.

We just keep writing, because we don’t know what else to do.

A few years ago I worked on a political campaign that was very near and dear to my heart. My candidate was the most qualified, the smartest, the most experienced, and was in it for all the right reasons. There was no logical reason for him not to win.

Everyone on the team worked hard and felt confident that even more than our efforts, his qualifications would make the election a sure thing.

The evening after the polls closed we all went to a local bar to eat and drink and wait for the results to come in. I don’t think there was a doubter in the bunch. I don’t think it crossed anyone’s mind that the election might even be close.

I can’t remember if the local news covered the results, or if we just watched them on our iPhones, but I remember at one point things went from total land slide to getting a little too close to comfort. I remember one of my teammates giving me the raised eyebrows, and passing the phone to me under the table. I remember the sinking feeling as the numbers crept closer and closer together.

Despite two or three glasses of wine, those numbers made me feel icily sober. I went into the bathroom, closed the door, turned the lock, and hit the cold tiles hard enough to evoke a protest of pain from my knee caps. The sweet stench of disinfectant surrounded me, and the toilet sweated cool drops of water in the artificially heated air. I raised my eyes to the water stained ceiling, squeezed them shut, and prayed.

“Dear God, Dear Universe, Dear Grama, Dear Whoever is in Charge, please PLEASE let us win this. We deserve it, and we all need it to believe that the system works…” I prayed until some one knocked on the door, then I brushed the dust off the knees of my tights and walked back to our table.

Twenty minutes later the count was over. We had lost.

I was 30 years old, heartbroken, and done praying. If a thoughtful, hopeful, faithful prayer didn’t swing an election that had no business going the wrong way, then I wasn’t going to waste my time anymore.

Since then, I have found myself pleading with the universe many times. Of course in the NICU, where there are no atheists, and when we were stuck in that blizzard in Arizona, and when we had decided to get pregnant again, and even sometimes when I really want something to go my way at work. I tell myself that it’s not prayer, that it’s just releasing good energy into the universe. But really it’s just an admission that I have no control over some things.

When we were in the hospital with Tommy Jr, I didn’t even know what to pray for. I just kept thinking- “Please make it be OK” without letting myself imagine what OK would look like. It wasn’t like the election: OK was a win for my candidate. But once Tommy arrived in the world, so tiny and unfinished and pained, OK was harder to fathom. I still don’t know what OK is.

Now everyday I feel my little girl squirming around in my belly. I want her to be healthy and happy, I want Tom and I to figure out what we’re going to do with our careers, I want everything to be OK. But my instinct to pray, or put out good energy, or whatever, is gone. I don’t know if years of insisting I’m a non-believer has finally set in, or if I’m too afraid to ask for something that might not be possible. Or maybe it’s possible, but not probable, or maybe I’m not capable.

I think I miss prayer, and miss believing that there is someone somewhere who is listening to my pleadings. I can’t get it back though, I think I lost it when I stopped practicing. Right after my Grama died and for a long time after Tommy Jr died I thought they’d stick around to look after me. Now I can’t feel them anymore, and they certainly aren’t bending any rules for us.

Atheism is only a comfort when you’ve run out of hope. But when you’re still feeling optimistic, and still want the universe to hear you, not believing kind of sucks. I’m going to try and get back into practice, and be mindful of the things I hope for. And in the meantime I’ll take these little kicks and rolls as a sign that there is something much bigger out there, even if I can’t tell it what to do.

Our tiny downtown apartment has become a jungle of brown moving boxes and suitcases. Ramona Quimby is in a constant state of anxiety thinking that every night we’re packing for a vacation. I am in a constant state of anxiety over not being able to lift anything over 10 pounds. Tom G is not in a state of anxiety as far as I can tell.

The preparation has been a real family affair. Every time I reached for a heavy suitcase or pile of books, Baby Girl gave me a kick in the guts (or bladder). I feel like she and I have gotten to know each other now, and she’s looking out for me. For us really.

But it’s almost over now- the movers arrive at 8:30am tomorrow. We have to be fully out by Wednesday the 31st. I feel like I’m in high school again and I have a term paper due next week and I just have to keep waiting until I get freaked out enough to DO IT.

The anticipation is always worst then the event.

The night before my 20 week ultrasound I had my first baby dream ever. In my dream my baby was a sweet and snugly black haired beauty, who told me calmly- Now I’m going to have a temper tantrum. When I woke up from the dream I had a big fat smile on my fat pregnancy face…and for the first time I felt like this was really happening. We are going to have a baby.

We told the ultrasound technician that we wanted to find out the gender. She happily agreed but explained that she had to take bunch of measurements and pictures first. Tom and I kept trying to spot a little wiener on the screen and making the tech laugh by our excited yelps: Are those balls?!? Then she said- “I know what the gender is now, are you ready?”

“Yes yes!” We shouted.

“You’re having a baby girl!” We couldn’t believe it. And, we knew it! Neither Tom nor I ever really doubted that we were having a girl. It was the same way when I was pregnant with Tommy Jr- we just knew there was a little boy in there. Of course the psychic was right- she said twice that we’d have a little girl, and that her big brother would help her throughout her life. I hope that Tommy Jr was with us in the ultrasound room, because I miss him even a little more with this extra joy.

I already feel close to my daughter, I already feel like she’s a part of our family. I’m not afraid to hope anymore, because she’s here, she’s a part of us, she’s ours.

Tomorrow is our 20 week appointment and hour long ultra-sound. We get to find out who’s living in my stomach, how the little one is growing. I’m really excited, and only slightly scared. Although by tomorrow, I might be very very scared. I have noticed my sleeping patterns getting progressively worse as we’ve gotten closer to the appointment, but I might also be freaking out about the move. The move is taking up a lot of mental energy that would probably otherwise be spent worrying, so that’s good.

I’m also getting more comfortable lying about the number of children I have. Now I almost always say this is my first. I never ever thought I’d do it, but here I am- smiling and charming and lying through my teeth. I finally realized that people only ask you that question (Is this your first?) because they want to TELL you something, not because they really give a shit. I mean, what person who doesn’t know what happened would really care how many children I have? It’s not like they’re doing a survey or offering me a cash prize if I say the answer they want to hear, so why don’t I just lie and get the conversation over with? If I’m feeling really mean or crabby I might drop the dead baby bomb, but usually I say- Yes, this is my first- and then wait for them to tell me whatever they wanted to tell me in the first place.

Occasionally I can sense that it’s ok to tell the truth, but even then I usually end up doggedly reassuring the person that it’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine.

So really I’m lying either way.

If you’re reading this blog and you’re not a baby-loss parent or reproductively challenged, please consider this advice: If you strike up a conversation with a pregnant lady, just speak in present terms. Don’t ask about her fertility past, don’t make assumptions about the future. And if you want to talk about yourself, just do it. Don’t throw her a conversational bone just because you feel like too big of a jag talking non-stop about yourself. The lack of sincerity doesn’t de-jag you.

I never thought I’d be one of those people who had to build a wall around themselves. I thought I’d forever be this very honest, open person who tries to be self-aware and hopeful. It’s just luck and good genes that has allowed me to be this way for this long, but I think that emotional walls are a part of the human existence.

That’s enough hot air for one little blog entry. Tomorrow is a big day, no matter what happens. I love this child already, and by this time tomorrow I hope to be obsessing about something new: names!

We’ve started packing again. Since 2001 I’ve moved 9 times. Looking back it seems as crazy as it was annoying at the time. But I became a serial bargainer- I’d wait until the last two weeks of fall moving season and pick up great deals. Then my lease would be up after a year and the landlord would find some sucker to pay full price and kick me out. My friends would dread when I called them in September because it meant another round of hauling my furniture up and down stairs.

Sometimes I got bored apartment hunting and moved into such awful places that I had to flee as soon as the lease was up. My oldest brother still talks with sadness and stunned confusion about helping me move into an “efficiency apartment” that was not much larger than the 500,000 pound TV he carried up the stairs because I hadn’t noticed there was an elevator down the hall. Once I met Tom and moved into our first not potential-for-horror-film-set apartment, we started getting movers and honing our apartment finding skills. I mean we hired someone to do it for us, of course.

Maybe this will be our last move out of an apartment in Chicago. Likely we’ll eventually figure out a way to live in a house other than one owned by our parents, and in a few years I’ll get one of those Google cars so we can go out drinking and have the car drive the baby sitter home.

So the clock is ticking…two more weeks and then we’ll have one of those huge life changes that takes about ten days to get used to. On the eleventh day you can barely remember how it was before.