by Her on September 1, 2010
Have you ever cried over an episode of Weeds?
I hadn’t either, not until this week. To be honest, I wasn’t crying over the episode because it wasn’t even on. That was the problem–we’ve been in the New Mexico mountains, for the week to get away from the Texas heat, and I was relieved to see that the Geek’s parents had set up Showtime at their house here, so when it was time for Weeds, I was fully primed.
But.
Always a but, right?
The parental monitor feature had been turned on so we couldn’t get the show. It’s for adults, apparently. Who knew? The Geek called his mom in a hurry to get the code for it, but she had no idea what it was, so I didn’t get to watch it. I felt like a four year old who was just told she couldn’t have the last purple popsicle after being outside all day. Guess who had the pleasure of taking the brunt of my whininess? As most things do, it blew over, but not without a long period of irrational stony silence.
Ah, and then we started talking about my baby shower. My mom is helping a friend of hers host it, so she asked me to start pulling together a list of people to invite. I was really struggling with this, and could just come up with a few names. I whined about that too–I told the Geek that only five people were going to come, and it turned into this melodramatic fuss about how even if I wanted a village to help raise this child that wouldn’t happen because yada, yada, yada…
That escalated into an mini freak out about how his family isn’t even going to want to know our child because they have too much on their plate already (utterly ridiculous, actually). It wasn’t pretty. The terrible part of it all was that in the midst of everything I knew I was being absurd. I knew that everything I was thinking and saying was entirely off base. I’m pretty sure his parents want to meet this baby almost as much as we do but I just couldn’t turn it off, and things kept spiraling. If you know me even a little bit, you know that I’m a fairly level person and it takes quite a bit to set me off. I never thought that I would be susceptible to whatever hormonal switch happens during pregnancy that makes people go a little nuts sometimes. The Geek wasn’t expecting it either, poor guy.
The Geek was slightly excited by the prospect of a five person shower, which kept making me even more upset. He was looking at it from a minimalist point of view–less people, less stuff. I was looking at it as “oh my god, we’re the only people who are ever going to care about this baby, ever!”
Such are the joys of the infamous pregnancy mood swings. I’ve never felt this ridiculous, but at least we always end things laughing.
On the bright side, crying is really a delightful way of clearing out my sinuses!
by Her on August 13, 2010
I think I’ve mentioned that I did Tae Kwon Do for more than a decade, and even competed all over Texas for a while. Pain was a pal those years–I broke an arm, a wrist, too many toes, and sprained more ankles than I can count.
I also broke my foot when I was 16, but that was on a playground designed for toddlers. Let’s call it a martial arts accident. That’ll be better for both of us.
The thing is, only the toes breaking made me cry. I didn’t realize that my wrist was mangled, and I wanted to get back up and keep fighting while everyone else was telling me hell no. That made for a pretty neon pink cast–no one messed with me because you know, when you break a bone, you must be pretty tough. I knew my foot was broken, but I was having too much fun on vacation to stop. I went to the ER a few days later after it became a bit much. The whole not being able to move thing got tiresome. Obviously my mom was not with me on that trip.
The pain gluttony doesn’t stop there. Oh no. The Geek and I were vacationing at the beach when I decided on impulse to get a Brazilian wax. That really does have to be an impulse thing, I think. I can’t imagine brooding over that for days. I mean, knowing that you’re going to go somewhere and voluntarily allow some stranger to pour hot wax all over the most sensitive part of your body does not a pleasant anticipation make.
So, we’re driving down the highway, and I crack some joke about doing it. The Geek loves the idea and runs with it. Next thing I know, I’m naked in some dim room with a hot light and a vat of wax. Amazing. The Geek waited in the lobby–there wasn’t much separating the two rooms, just a curtain. The procedure is done before I know it, and the Geek is asking why and how in the hell I was laughing throughout it all. That’s right. The Brazilian wax made me laugh. I’m not sure if that makes me a masochist or what, but that’s how I responded to the pleasure of having someone yank it all away.
Here I am, 18 weeks pregnant, thinking it would be a fabulous idea to do it again.The less I have to think about in the coming weeks and months the better. I’m pretty sure shaving isn’t going to make the list at some point.
I hear things are a little different when you’re attempting to do something like this while pregnant. Have any of you done it? And survived?
Basically, I bought a deal for a Brazilian and I need support to make me go through with it or maybe some horror stories so I can feel superior when it actually happens painlessly, because it will be painless, right? Right?
Keep in mind that broken bones don’t make me cry, but paper cuts sure do.
I’m nearly at the 17 week mark of this pregnancy, and I’m leaving for BlogHer in New York on Thursday.
When I bought the pass to BlogHer much earlier this year, I did it with the intent of alleviating what I thought would be a stressful August. August is a bit of a loaded month for me–a year ago today, I was naively pregnant. I found a couple weeks later that the pregnancy was not viable. I had never heard of a blighted ovum, but that’s what I had. It was hard, but I made it through. Then, after getting pregnant in November, I suddenly had an August due date. You all know how that one ends too. I thought BlogHer would be a perfect distraction, and since it was only a hop away from Cambridge, I jumped on the ticket. My life has changed just a little, no?
And now, here I am, in August, pregnant again.
Most of the time I’m elated thinking about this baby who seems to be doing so well, but sometimes, just sometimes, I spin my ring around and wonder who those babies would be like. What would it be like to have a 5 month old right now or to be expecting a baby any second? Who would they have been? That’s difficult to think about, but sometimes my mind just drifts to that point. I started feeling guilty about being sad at all when I have so much to cherish right now, but that’s not the sort of thing I’m ever likely to completely let go of, and I don’t think I’d want to even if I could. I fell in love with them hard in those few weeks, and to pretend I didn’t would be impossible.
The Geek and I have processed this in such different ways. He is, and ought to be, focused on this pregnancy, this joy. For him the grieving ended more or less when the initial pain faded away. When he thinks of August he doesn’t think of loss–he thinks of a successful halfway mark to this pregnancy. For a while this hurt me. I felt like I was carrying the memory alone. After talking about it with him I know I’m not. He remembers just as well as I do those nights on the bathroom floor just willing it to end. His worry for me is what he remembers more than anything, I think, while I remember the lost dreams more than anything. Both responses are valid, but I didn’t know how to reconcile them. He did admit to feeling a bit sad when I talked about what I was going through, my thought processes. Knowing that he could still feel sad about it helped me a bit, as ridiculous as it may sound.
When I found out I was pregnant again in May, I immediately counted ahead to see how far along I would be for BlogHer, but then chided myself for thinking I would ever make it that far. Well, I’ve made it, and I anticipate making it all the way at this point. It’s been a hard year in many ways, but I’ve had so many moments where I’ve felt nearly unbearably lucky. I’m grateful for those moments, and so incredibly grateful that I was wrong for thinking that things couldn’t go well. I’m trying to see August as a month to cherish. I still haven’t been able to see the positive in the miscarriages–I’m not someone who believes that everything happens for a reason, but I do know that once I set eyes on this child, it will be incomprehensible that I would have had any other child, and for that, I am grateful again.
I’ve allowed myself to hold on to a small part of the grief of the last year, but that’s it. A small part. I’m focusing on remembering all that is joyful and good in my life, recognizing that there is no shortage of that, and that none of this would hurt if I didn’t love so fully and so quickly.
Right now this keyboard is about 20 feet from my husband’s sleeping parents. 27 days ago we had 2,000 miles separating us. That’s a radical shift, no?
After the August miscarriage I felt a bit crushed by how little support we got from family even though we lived not too far from them. I do have to admit that part of the move (for me, not the Geek) was spiteful. I wanted to show that we didn’t need them, that we went through hellacious times without them, and we were damned well going to go through the best of times without them too. This was all an internal conflict that was never shared with my family, and not even really with the Geek. After a bit, okay, a lot, of reflection, this motivation began to fade and I began to cherish the experience of living in Cambridge for what it was–a chance to autonomously continue to develop my worldview.
We adore his parents. We really, really do. Because of this, we didn’t want to make any waves at all, so conversation about our living arrangements never came up. Something would happen and we would seethe without sharing our frustrations. We pretended nothing was wrong. His mother is one of the kindest, most generous women I know, almost to a fault. The Geek has a brother and sister who are both married with a baby. Both of them are startlingly dependent on their mom for basic things–she’ll make huge meals, then call them over. She watches one of her granddaughters every single day and provides lunch for her daughter and son-in-law every day. That’s a lot, and that’s just a small bit of what she does on a regular basis. Let’s just say that my sister-in-law has not once bought formula in the entire year her daughter has been alive. Or toys, or food, or clothes.
Her kitchen is a community kitchen in the loosest way. This can be a beautiful thing, and it is until conflict arises. I haven’t had the best of appetites lately, and it’s pretty miraculous when I can find food that sits well with me. The Geek and I bought limited amounts of food that we knew I’d be able to eat, and we stored it in the fridge and went along our day. Later, we found his sister munching on the food that we had just bought.
The fury!
We told his mom we were going to start labeling my food and she balked. She didn’t like the idea of creating any sort of division, so she said she would just buy all of our food from here on out. That worked until there was nothing palatable for me and we bought more food, yeast rolls this time. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I cried when I found out that my brother-in-law had eaten them for his dinner. He ate them crispy, no less! Doesn’t he know that they’re supposed to be baked only to a point of supreme gooeyness? Duh. I think something about pregnancy makes your taste buds feel a little more entitled to what they were expecting to eat.
The Geek told his mom that I was pretty upset. She’s been pregnant; she understood, and this time agreed to let us have a special section in the fridge. Problem solved, and without too much awkwardness.
I think I’ll skip the tension headaches next time. We’ve never been very good at telling them what we need. After the miscarriage I just assumed that support would be a given–I didn’t even consider that they would be more concerned about giving us the space they thought we might need to grieve. It wasn’t until the January miscarriage that we expressed how hurt we were by what we perceived as apathy. They were blown away that we had been harboring those resentments, and made it really clear that anything they did (or didn’t do) was done out of love and concern. It was a painful conversation, but it did give me a bit of closure.
Lost yeast rolls and miscarriages are obviously on opposite ends of the spectrum, but both have taught us that sometimes we just need to help our parents understand our needs. As much as we want them to know these things intuitively, they won’t, and it is unfair to expect them to.
