Awkwardly Social

 My 36th birthday was celebrated with a low key dinner at an Italian restaurant, cut short by a digestive “emergency” caused by an ill-advised meal of 1/2 jar of pepperocinis for lunch. It was, uh, explosive.  I came home and cried because I didn’t get any cake on my actual birthday, making me the most pathetic pregnant person ever.

The day after my birthday I got an awkward pregnancy massage (gift certificate, woo!). It was a little weird when the therapist guided me down the hall by putting his hand on my shoulder and then the therapy room only had the ambient noise of what sounded like a parking garage air filter.   I hate massage music generally, but this was… weirdly quiet but also loud.  Then the massage therapist got chatty at the end and I left all out of sorts.  Laying on your side and your back during a massage is foreign to me, and I think when I go back to finish off my gift certificate (2.5 more massages!) I’ll make sure I get a female therapist and speak up about the lack of any sort of music or noise machine.

Then to top of my post birthday day, I got in a huge fight with Seth when I back-seat drove (to keep us out of an accident) and he yelled at me.  The night finally ended with a cupcake from Crumbs Bake Shop and all was right with the world again.

The past week I’ve been making sure I walk at least 2 miles a day and I’ve added a pregnancy DVD to the mix.  I’m kind of in a love/hate relationship with Linsday Brin, I like the workout alright, but there’s something hateful about doing such an easy workout and still being exhausted at the end. All the working out and walking has me at a 1.5 pound weight gain for the week.  Which brings us to our unflattering photo portion of the evening!

(15 weeks, above)

(16 weeks, above)

 

I’m always a butt/thighs weight gainer and this pregnancy is no different.

 

I’m off work for about 5 weeks before my next show starts so I’m going to try to get a few meals cooked and a few books read and hopefully a few things done on my rapidly expanding Maternity To Do List.

We had an OB appointment today, and I was super excited to have an ultrasound, and then told I was only going to get a doppler of the heartbeat. SAD FACE. The heart still beats though, so HAPPY FACE.  As I said on twitter in spite of (or because of?) all of my worrying, this fetus remains living.

I’m still sort of confused about amnio.  At this point, seeing as we’ve made it so far keeping this fetus alive (14 weeks 2 days!) I feel like I don’t want to find out about any bad things.  I just want to lalala them away.  Our Down Syndrome/Trisomy 21 chances (Which I just found out today are the SAME thing, huh, really did I hear it right? Someone confirm.) are 1 in 2,500, our Trisomy 18 chances are 1 in 48,000.  Miscarriage rates for amnio are listed (in a 2006 survey/study thingie) at around 1 in 1,600. I don’t do odds very well, but um, I still find the Down’s rate and the amnio rate VERY close together.  I have one more blood test that I’m doing next week and after that maybe I’ll have a better answer on whether to continue testing or just let it go.  Snore.  Sorry, even I’m tired of talking about this.

Let’s talk about lists.  I’ve started to NEED to make lists.  Do you have lists?  May I copy your list? Baby related only.  Although if your house cleaning list is rad, I’ll take that too.  Ha, just kidding, I don’t clean. No really, I maybe swiffer every other week, but the rest of the cleaning is Seth’s domain. Also the grocery shopping.  And the cooking (I mean take out delivery ordering).  So, what do I do around here? I sometimes feed the dog, and I always clean up her “situations” in the back yard.  I’m basically like your ne’er do well teen aged daughter. But slightly less surly.  SLIGHTLY.

One other random thing that I’d like to report is last night I had a dream and one of the side characters was this woman I worked with 4 years ago and then again worked at the same building with last year.  We weren’t close, but friendly enough to have drinks once or twice and say hi in the hallways.  Well, in my dream I couldn’t remember her name, I woke up and was like, DUH her name is the large planetoid object in the night (and sometimes day) sky.  And then, CREEPY GHOST MUSIC, I saw her at my doctor’s appointment today.  THE VERY NEXT DAY.  I was so weirded out that I didn’t say a word to her.  Does this mean I’m psychic?  Or that the world really is coming to an end?  Or mere coincidence.  I don’t know, but it’s still giving me woo-woo chills.

I boarded the flight for Berlin on the eve of leaving my first trimester.  We’d just had an excellent First Trimester Screening and a first appointment with the OB I call Dr. Callie.  But a few things were flipping me out, because pregnancy for me has been and most likely will continue to be a long journey of minor flip outs.

The first thing flipping me out was my new ear drum.  I had it surgically grafted in February and by all accounts it was totally healed, but three days before our flight I was getting congested and worrying about the fact that most (all?) decongestants are Class C drugs, which depending on your OB can either kill your baby or be totally fine.  My OB was out of the office for the rest of the week so her nurse called me back and said I could use Tylenol Cold & Sinus.  After 3 terrible drug store visits, I googled Tylenol Cold & Sinus and um, THEY DON’T MAKE IT ANYMORE. By this time, I’d seen my acupuncturist who tried to free my sinuses of whatever gunk had taken hold in there with a steam/herbal remedy.  It sort of helped, but my anxiety about not having something to protect my shiny new ear drum on the plane was still weighing heavily on my un-medicated mind.  Pregnant women, I believe, are this crazy because we cannot just take the good drugs.  The xanax and the sudafed and the opiates (*ahem*).

The second thing flipping me out was that I had planned this trip to concur with my late mother’s birthday.  The small amount of money she left me, I knew she would want to be spent on things like travel or experience.  She was big on experience.  In fact, she and my father set up a trust fund for my sister and me as babies for college or “educational experience” which included pretty much anything we could convince them would enrich our lives. (Horse camp!) So, I booked our tickets over Christmas and her birthday because she would have LOVED to visit Germany on her birthday and because it really was the only time my husband and I are guaranteed to not be expected in a cutting room.  But my grief began to take hold the week before Christmas and I wished I had opted to spend mom’s birthday with my sister.  Seth told me to change the tickets, but my mom would have been appalled at the $400 per ticket change fee, so I forged ahead.  Tears and pregnancy hormones streaming.  These tears came back full force when things started to take a shit-sky-dive with Seth’s son and I sobbed that I couldn’t DO THIS! I should be with my SISTER. And maybe I should have been, but my mom taught me many things, and one of them was how important it is to do new things.  That was not very comforting when I was wishing she were still alive and could be there with me at the symphony.

The third thing flipping me out was the slightly ominous warning about International cheese given to me by my pretty laid back OB.  The ONE thing she told me to watch out for was unpasteurized cheeses that are more common in Europe than in the U.S.  So, every single meal I ate in Germany, from our first meal at the in-laws with potato gratin, I wondered if I was engaging with the enemy.  I had no idea how much cheese would be in German food until I tried to order from a German menu.  Turns out, A LOT.

The final thing that flipped me out were the fireworks and the smoking.  We could not escape either.  The fireworks, as I mentioned in the Travel Diaries, were so loud and nerve-shattering that I was filled with adrenaline for many, many hours, and I was pretty sure all the gun powder smoke was going to have an adverse effect.  Not to mention soaking the fetus in all that nerve calming gin.  (Just kidding about the gin.) The cigarette smoke was insidious.  Our hotel room was at the end of the hall near the stairwell, and every night cigarette smoke would waft in under the door.  I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if my jet lag hadn’t kept me awake most nights from 2am to 6am, but yeah, I began shoving a blanket under our door every night and still it wafted in.  Poor fetus, I hope it enjoys it’s childhood asthma.  That is, if it survived the adrenaline bath.

My biggest win was splurging on Business Class seats.  Being able to lay down, have real meals and not have to touch another human on the plane saved what little sanity I still have.  I know this kind of travel is probably not feasible for me the next time I visit Europe, but goddamnit, I might just start saving now, because wow, what a difference.

Christmas Eve

We exchange gifts, drop Lula off at her kennel and finish packing. We get to the airport really early and hang out in the business class lounge where I lament that I cannot partake in all the free booze. Our flight to Zurich is hot and a little crazy making.  The business class steward spoke to me in German the first half of the flight, then, at breakfast said, “Oh! You’re American! You have a German last name!” I guess he thought I was mildly retarded before when I never understood a word he said?

Christmas Day

We land in Zurich and are creeped out and fascinated by the bird/cow/horn playing sound effects and the projected slutty Heidi on the wall of the airport train.  Get taken by bus out to the tarmac to load what looks like a ramshackle jet from the pre-war era.  Our view of the Alps as we ascended is breathtaking.  I suddenly want to become a slutty Heidi.  We landed in Berlin and immediately exited our gate, which was a grave error. Baggage claim at Tegel is at your gate.  We spent a good 20 minutes talking to hilarious “information” people who were very confused that we could have possibly missed our very obvious baggage claim and finally were directed to a tiny little shack outside of the main airport terminal to wait for our bags with a grumpy Swiss (Spanish? accent of unknown origin) woman who made the same mistake we did. Then we went to my husband’s son’s in-laws for Christmas dinner.  Lamb and potato gratin. The Christmas tree had real candles for lights. I’ve never seen a more beautiful tree.  My hives have returned in full and epic force and will torture me for the rest of the trip.  We went back to the hotel and slept for more than 12 hours.

The 26th

My mom’s birthday.  We walked around the city at dusk.  We lit a candle for my mother at a Catholic church (may she forgive me for the weird choice of religious remembrance) and had dinner at Milagro - spaetzle and pizza and minestrone.  It was eclectic.  We headed to the center (ish?) part of town to have drinks at the former Nazi and Stalin headquarters (now the Adlon Hotel) seeing the Brandenburg Gate, the old symphony hall, and embassy row, then to the symphony to hear Beethoven’s 5th, Bach’s Tocata in Fugue (as soon as the Tocata started I began to cry.  My mom would have loved it so much), Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, something by Liszt that I didn’t like, and 2 other pieces with a Ravel’s Bolero finale wherein the trombone player totally fucked up his solo.  So much so that after he was finished he put down his trombone and lifted his hands up like, “What can you do?” I was starving after the concert (PREGNANCY!) so we got pizza and pasta at a weird restaurant in the Sony Center that required ordering and sitting and using a card and being paged.  Then we went and had coffee at the Ritz and went to bed at 2am. Again sleeping more than 12 hours, but waking in the middle of the night because where the fuck are we?

The 27th

We got up at about 2pm again and headed to the famous mall KaDaWe.  It is basically like Europe’s classy (and small) answer to the Mall of America.  We ate in the Whole Foods-esque food court and Seth’s son got pissed about something and left for a while to get a handle on himself (he is 30… and this was a sign of things to come). We headed out with Seth’s son’s wife to a beautiful Christmas market where we bought a traditional German Christmas decoration.  It’s made of out what looks like Balsa wood, you light candles underneath a fan and the heat makes them and the scene below turn.  Then, 1 hour later, I was starving again so we met up with Seth’s son who seemed like he “had a handle on himself” and went to a Vietnamese restaurant where I had a delicious vegetarian Pho.  Almost everything is tasting like heaven and pregnancy doesn’t seem so bad except for the insane hives that are making me crazy.  After that we went to an awesome German bar where beers take 3 minutes to pull and they serve pretzels with something that looks like a Slim Jim.  A man at the table behind us fell asleep in his chair and he friends jovially laughed and chatted as this were a normal thing, which it probably was. As we were about to leave, I went to the bathroom and was trapped in there by a drunken woman, who needed advice about sleeping with her married (and her words “kind of gay”) male friend because she just had sex on a date and didn’t have an orgasm, and that, my friends, did not stand with her!  She would not let me leave until I told her what to do and finally I said, “Have sex with whoever you want, but don’t forget ‘he’s married!’  We took the U Bahn back to our hotel’s neighborhood and I was starving again so we had falafel at a little fast food Lebanese place and finally headed to bed.

The 28th

We meet Seth’s son and his wife for a trip out to the Prenzlerburg neighborhood for breakfast.  I’m feeling crappy and pukey and every smell on the subway makes me want to barf. I begin to resent being pregnant as I cannot partake in the spread of deli meats and cheeses but settle for an awesome croissant and fruit that, quite frankly, is better than anything I’ve ever tasted in Los Angeles.  Something is clearly up with Seth’s son who says about 10 words then never speaks again, this is a problem and I begin to hate Berlin and Seth’s family, why can’t people just fucking ACT RIGHT.  Seth’s son’s wife and I window shop and we wind through the pretty neighborhood, but finally after being giving the silent treatment for 2 hours, we head back to the hotel and eat dinner at the fantastic restaurant there. I end up being hungry again 2.5 hours later, but eat the roll I shoved in my pocket at breakfast.

The 29th

Our hotel’s breakfast is over right as we arrive and my hunger MUST be fed, so we go to another hotel and have THEIR breakfast.  We return to the hotel where I begin to feel a grump coming on that I assume will pass if I take a nap.  After my nap, I have a mental breakdown and cannot leave the hotel to do anything, jet lag, the family situation, the fact that I’ve given up Christmas and my mom’s birthday to be in Berlin with Seth’s family who is clearly having severe issues has started to wear on me.  Finally we venture out to Osteria No. 1, and have an amazing Italian meal.  Then we go window shopping, and have a grocery store adventure. I love foreign grocery stores.

The 30th

After breakfast in our room, (this discovery changes our LIVES), I head out shopping on my own, while Seth tries to figure out if his kid actually needs to be committed or if he’s just being his usually charming self.  I buy a teddy bear for the creature I assume is still growing inside of me (paranoia, will I ever feel like this baby is going to just STAY ALIVE), a pair of boots and a handbag.  Then  Checkpoint Charlie, the Reichstag, aborted attempt at Hamburger Banhoff, Brandenburg gate, I refuse to have dinner with Seth’s son and we take a cab ride that took us the LONG way back to Kreuzburg then ate at Milagro again, cried into my supper. Revelers in the street to rival Mardi Gras.

New Year’s Eve (Silvester!)

The fireworks begin at dawn and do not stop for more than 24 hours.  We have breakfast in the room and head out to Potsdam to see Frederick’s “castle” that I refuse to call a castle because it’s a palace.  The Sanssouci Park is gorgeous and we walk and walk.  His new “castle” (ALSO A PALACE) was never lived in by him, which is a damned shame because it is an impressively large piece of real estate. We catch a bus into the Dutch district in town (Frederick brought in the Dutch to dike the city, the Dutch know how to dike!) and had a fantastic German meal that I will dream about forever. We catch the S Bahn back to Berlin and I take a nap while Seth and his son go to Victoria Park to warm up their bottle rocket arms.  At around 8:30PM we all reconvene in Kreuzberg and try to find a restaurant that will seat us.  We end up in the bar of a tiny Austrian restaurant with a crazy Spanish waiter and eat another meal that I will dream about for the rest of this pregnancy. (I had this beef soup with “pancake” in it, and I’m telling you, my stomach is growling for that masterpiece.) Before we can leave the waiter has everyone do a shot of “schnapps” and I abstain.  We head back to Victoria Park to join the madness.  Fireworks are going off all around us, and we set off a few of our own.  The controlled chaos sets my adrenaline so high I’m positive I have killed the baby and do not sleep all night.

New Year’s Day

I finally nod off for a couple of hours, and we get breakfast in the room again before meeting up with Seth’s son to head out for a major day of walking. We start with the East Side Gallery - a remaining piece of wall painted by artists.  Then to Treptower Park to the Russian soldiers’ memorial, which actually is called The Soviet War Memorial.  I find that a little odd seeing as it commemorates the soldiers that died in WWII during the taking of Berlin, but you know the Soviets! It’s all about them.  Then we head to Gorlitzer Park to see where Seth’s son performed (and adapted) a huge Shakespeare play.  We eat at another German restaurant and my bratwurst and sauerkraut dreams are dashed and I eat lentil soup and French fries instead (Pregnancy!).  Then we head to the high end “red light district” but all the prostitutes aren’t on duty yet. Then we walk for what I contend was 300 miles and finally have a mini breakdown and force everyone to get in a cab, which promptly gets a flat tire and FINALLY we get back to the hotel where I fall asleep for a good 2 hours ensuring I won’t be able to sleep for the rest of the night.  At 4am my hives have gotten so bad that I start sobbing and telling Seth that I need to go home right now.  I finally fall asleep and don’t wake up until 2pm.

Jan. 2nd

Our final day in Berlin and we head to Seth’s son’s apartment and eat cake and drink espresso and talk.  Then we walk to a restaurant and have a fantastic French? German? Fusion? dinner.  Then we walk to a cafe for hot cocoa and more conversation.  We walk back to their apartment and say goodbye.  I got more sad than I expected, probably because of the underlying sadness we witnessed transforming a couple into something else.  Tomorrow we leave and I am so glad to be going home, but I will say Berlin did finally grow on me.  I will not miss the cigarette smoking, God, they smoke a lot here, and the split bed and the terrible sheets, but there is a lot to love here.

Once again, I’ve yanked Sundry’s recap meme.  Last year’s recap can be found here.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

I lost a parent, planned a funeral, had a miscarriage, went through IVF, got pregnant, heard a heart beating inside of me that wasn’t my own, saw the profile of the baby growing inside of me.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Here’s what I wrote:

More: physical activity (NO), reading (YES), creativity (WHAT?), dance parties at home (YES!), cooking (NOPE), doing (YEP), seeing people who make me laugh (NOT ENOUGH!), telling people I appreciate them (NOT ENOUGH).

Less: complaining (PROBABLY NOT), television (IF LESS IS MORE, THEN YES), over-thinking (HA!), worrying (WHAT?), sitting (NOPE), being mad at my body for being imperfect (NUH-UH).

So that was not such a great showing.  I think this year I’ll just wing it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth??

A co-worker had a baby girl. I got to watch her go from not showing to big baby belly and it was pretty adorable.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My mother. And just typing that has put me in shock all over again. I cannot believe she is gone.

5. What countries did you visit?

Germany (I’m there right now!)

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A healthy, full term baby.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 14, I was sitting at work when my phone rang with an unfamiliar Seattle area-code number and my sister had to tell my mom was dead. I didn’t know grief until that moment.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Pitching a reality series at MTV.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not selling the aforementioned show.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

The OHSS was probably the most severe thing I went through this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

IVF treatments

12. Where did most of your money go?

IVF treatments

13. What did you get really excited about?

My sister’s visit in December and this trip to Berlin.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Landslide the cover by the Dixie Chicks that we played at my mom’s memorial.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:?

– happier or sadder? Sadder
– thinner or fatter? Fatter, between IVF and now pregnancy, I’ve put on some serious pounds.
– richer or poorer? Same

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Exercise and leaving the house

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Having a doctor look at my junk.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

On the 21st we spent Hannukah at my mother-in-laws and exchanged gifts, on Christmas Eve Seth and I exchanged gifts and boarded a plane to Germany, on Christmas day we landed in Zurich and transferred to Berlin, had a lamb dinner at Seth’s son’s father-in-law’s apartment and exchanged gifts. It’s been a weird Christmas this year, for sure.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

Game of Thrones and Revenge.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

I really liked Graceling, A Game of Thrones and Divergent.

21. What was your favorite music this year?

I guess Adele is going to have to top this list. I really loved 21, a lot.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

Drive and Another Earth.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

We had a karaoke party at my house and it was fantastic.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Finishing more personal creative projects.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Uh, it was mostly an ever expanding parade of comfortable clothes.

26. What kept you sane?

I can’t really say that I was sane, but my husband certainly did his best to keep me from going over the edge.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

You will never know when that phone call will come and the bottom will drop out of your world. So call that person you love and tell them.

Today would have been my mom’s 66th birthday. When I booked this trip to Germany, I thought about how she would have liked that I was here on her birthday.  She would have liked to be here with me.  I miss her and I wish my sister were here.  This is harder than I thought it would be.

First you have kind of a nerve wracking appointment with a genetic counselor.  This is where they start talking about all of the genetic disorders in the world and the possibilities of testing for them. Especially if one of you is an Ashkenzi Jew *coughSethcough*, they’ll talk to you about a lot of blood work that can be done, but honestly it’s overwhelming and not actually that helpful.  At least to me it wasn’t.  I’m mostly concerned with the big three - Down’s and the Terrible Trisomys. (I feel a hipster band name coming on…)

Then we moved to the ultrasound room where a giant tv displays your adorable sleeping baby, and for just a moment I wondered, why is it so still, is it dead? But then she pointed out the heartbeat, and starting doing a million measurements and then pounding (tapping really hard?) on my stomach to get the little creature to wake up.  The little creature was too tired and I had to cough it awake. And then hoo-boy, it was squiggled around flapped it’s arms and went promptly back to sleep.  (It must be dying, I thought.) Finally, she gets to the neck measurement and after what seemed like an hour she said, “Thin neck! Looks good, the doctor will be in in a moment to re-measure.”

The doctor came in and now the baby didn’t want to stay still.  (Last gasp for life, I thought.) And he also pronounced our baby as thin necked.

They called the lab to compare our measurements with our blood results and we were pronounced NEGATIVE for Down’s and the Terrible Trisomys.  Which, actually doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.  But our risk is deemed VERY low.

There’s something called the quad screening which is done at 16 weeks, I think, (I’ve been bombarded with tests and weeks and risks and this and that it’s all a muddle) which we might do instead of amnio, but it seems like CVS is off the table at the moment.  I guess I kind of want a definite answer.  Here’s where I ask how those of you who had children before all of this testing or those of you who went without testing dealt with the uncertainty?  Is it just something that some of you were comfortable with? I think part of my issue is that everything has been so plotted and planned out since conception that to not know now seems absurd (in my case only, not judging ANYONE for not getting insanely crazy about testing).

I mean we took one of these:

And got one of these:

In a matter of 10 weeks.  How is that possible? Christmas miracle indeed.

(I actually wrote this last night and THOUGHT I published it, but this morning it was sitting there chillin’ in my drafts folder, all “Whut?”)

After gorging myself on Kraft Mac & Cheese on Wednesday evening, I spent the next 3 days puking my guts out.  Now, I’m not saying eating a whole box of Kraft Mac & Cheese will give you sudden onset morning (ALL DAY AND NIGHT) sickness, but my empirical evidence is kind of proving that to be true.  So, use that information as you will.

I started to panic yesterday that I was never going to get better and that I wouldn’t be able to get on a plane to Germany much less out of bed by the following week, but today I felt mostly normal with only a couple of bouts of feeling weird when I let myself get too hungry.  I am no longer allowing myself to get too hungry, but also (LESSON LEARNED) I’m not eating entire boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese (NEVER FORGET).

I’ve learned a few things that I’d like my future self to remember. Mac & Cheese is a disgusting thing to revisit.  Crackers and fast food mashed potatoes, on the other hand, come up easy with very little to do. Orange juice never leaves your stomach and just sits there fermenting until you’re puking up your lunch even though you had it for breakfast, which is super creepy and tastes not very good. And popsicles, the white trashiest you can find, are a pretty easy way to get some fluids in you without making you barf.  Much.

These past three days have made me realize how incredibly easy I had it during the first part of my pregnancy and that hives and OHSS aside, I really was lucky.  I am the worst sick person ever.  I just cannot handle being puke sick. Last night after puking up my meager mashed potato dinner, I crawled back into bed and started sobbing.

I took a Benadryl and fell asleep and magically I felt better this morning.  I even managed to make it out to finish my Christmas shopping for Seth wherein I’m pretty sure a gay man made me buy him jeans that are going to be too tight and too short.  I basically bought him skinny short pants.  Whatever, gift receipt!

I had my first OB appointment today and being around the normals has its downsides.  For one, the gentleman (and I use that term VERY loosely with this fellow) sitting in the waiting room playing some kind of iPhone game with the volume on and exclaiming loudly when he did something stupid was a shock.  In the RE’s office, that shit don’t fly.  Everyone is ridiculously quiet in there except for the occasional precocious kid who wants to sing the alphabet to a crowd of terrified infertiles. The Normals, much like the Honey Badger, don’t give a shit. For two, no one seems to feel like your baby will just be dead inside of you at any moment.  This was evident when my OB did my ultrasound and she was so nonchalant about it.  She was all, “I just want to see this thing for myself,” (DIRECT QUOTE) and I was like, in my head, of course, “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead.”

And there it was, swimming!  It was swimming around.  She measured it at 10w4d, which makes NO SENSE, because according to my RE I’m 10w2d and according to me (who has a PhD in figuring out gestational ages) I am 10w3d.

We’re doing the 1st trimester screening and I’ve been warned that this screening has a lot of false positives, but that it’s a good way to gauge if you want to do amnio or CVS.  I think I’ll want to do CVS either way, but I don’t know if the timing will work out, so it might be amnio.  I know a lot of people have feelings about both of these procedures and what women should do should something terrible be discovered, but that is not open for discussion here.  I will be keeping all of those decisions and reasons close to the vest so if you care to comment about your beliefs about it (not that any of you would, you are all lovely and supportive and non-judgemental [at least in the comments where I can hear you] but in case I get some kind of random drive-by) I will be deleting and depending on the answer, possibly blocking.  I think every woman should have the right to make those kinds of choices without hearing about someone’s cousin who was told their child would have Down’s but they delivered a normal baby anyway, or how their sister’s co-worker didn’t get tested and had a baby with Trisomy 18 and how their life was changed magically for the better even though they watched their baby die.  I’ve heard the stories, I will be making my own choices.  I know you understand.  I guess I didn’t realize how sensitive this all makes me, but yeah, it does.  I mean even when we discuss it here at home I get my feathers ruffled.

So, life is moving along as it does.  I’m still in that place where I’m looking a little tubby and wearing looser pants that make me feel a little schlubby but are totally comfortable.  I’ll have whole days without an itch only to be covered in hives come 11pm.  And my queasiness is mostly gone, unless I accidentally swallow my own spit wrong and then I usually cough until I have almost puked and the queasiness remains for hours. But puke I have not.  I got a flu shot today because of the whole international travel for 14 hours in a metal tube with the infected of the world thing.  And I am starving every night at about midnight and again when I wake up.  Seth continues to be thick headed about how quickly my moods change why I act in certain ways and I have screamed, “Because I am PREGNANT GODDAMNIT,” at him more times than I can count. But we are excited and hopeful and looking forward to meeting this creature that happens to be swimming inside of me right now. It’s all very normal.

So, if I’m doing my math correctly, and honestly, I think I am and my doctor is wrong, I am officially 10 weeks today.

This week I was rarely queasy, but some food sounded utterly repellent.  Today I’ve been on and off queasy. The hives are still around, but I basically only get them when I’m trying to fall asleep.  Which is pleasant.

Today also marks 2 weeks until we leave for Berlin and um… I don’t have anything to wear.  Living in Los Angeles does not afford me the wardrobe options one needs for frigid cold weather.  So I’m trying to stock up on sweaters and ordering wool tights, etc. But I’m sort of resigned to the fact that I’m going to be cold a lot there.  Like all the time.

I’m also stocking up on kindle reads for the long flight and I picked up a couple of embarrassing guilty pleasure books from the library (Murder in Italy - the Amanda Knox story… for starters).  But I’m kind of stumped on what I should wear on the plane.  We have business class seats, so we get to lay flat.  And I am pretty uncomfortable laying flat in jeans.  Especially now that I’m becoming more rotund.  Do I change into pajama pants? That seems… hard. But I don’t know, maybe it’s not? Do I wear leggings? I need European travel help! The last time I flew to Europe I was 18 and I believe wearing something like jorts.  So, things have changed, yes? I think we can all agree wearing jorts to Europe in the dead of winter is not only the opposite of fashion forward, but begging for frost bite.

And finally on the other end of things I’ve been having dreams with mom in them. I’m thinking about her a lot these days and wishing she were around to give me vague advice about my hives and how to cure them.  What would have been her 66 birthday is coming up and it’s putting kind of a crushing weight on my chest.

So, anyway, I’m thinking of all you who have lost loved ones and are missing them this holiday season.