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Places to Go:
You May Not Recognize Me
Yesterday afternoon my internet ordered doppler arrived and it remained untouched until Mother could come home and supervise any crazies that happened (or didn’t happen). I had been giving myself pep talks and reminding myself that it may not work just yet and that I needed to calm the frick down regardless.
Mother arrived home with a fantastic bag of fast food (per request) and some double A batteries. We consumed our unhealthy dinner and then proceeded to study up on the machine. It seemed easy enough: put the goop on my gut and use the probe to move around. The problem is that I have a tendency to want to be in control of the ship and for some reason I wanted to watch the probe glide around and, well it wasn’t very comfortable to remain in a partial sit up position. I ceded control and plopped back onto the couch and tried to pretend like I didn’t care.
And then we heard the weirdest thing- something in my gut was making copies. A super fast xerox machine was churning and thumping away in there. Mother moved the probe around and we kept coming back to this one spot under my belly button and a little over. We think it was the Snork and the sound made us pretty drunk with happiness.
I slept great last night, only good dreams featuring my Grandfather and his brown Pontiac and long drives. I woke up happy and content and it was delicious.
The other fantastic thing going on today is that a certain fuzzy black kitty is having a birthday! 9 years ago BG Talula was born. She was part of a litter of a down the street neighbor of someone that I worked with. She was a total surprise given to me in early October and because she was so damn cute the entire office fell in love with her. She spent the first 6 months of her life coming to work with me- she even had a little tiny litter box set up in the ladies restroom. Happy Birthday, BG!
Here we are around 9 years ago at work:
And here she is all grown up in a sea of Grovers:
Anxiety dreams are messing with my sleep.
Every night I dream three or four dreams deeply and intensely. I dream scenarios that include people from my past. There is a panel of dreams that feature old friends from high school living out these amazing and fulfilling lives and I am usually just an extra or bit player watching from the sidelines. (thank you facebook for now giving me current photographs) I dream about former jobs, former bosses, former cars, former apartments. It is exhausting and annoying and I am beginning to really think my subconscious is lazy. I mean how predictable to have a dream about a former close friend that is now an extremely famous lounge singer at a club where I bus tables.
But I know that these dreams really spell out my anxiety and my fears and my dread. And the common theme seems to be your basic, “You are a failure” or “you are not worthy” variety. Every night I go to bed exhausted and hot and sometimes cranky, and every night I toss and turn in sad versions of my life.
Obviously this is about you know what.
I really thought that there would be this magical, glittery star feeling in my soul right now. This special, secret knowledge that everything is going to fine. Instead I find myself drowning in disbelief.
The worst thing that I did for myself this weekend was watch a new Helen Hunt movie on DVD. Then She Found Me seemed like it would be interesting and a perfect weekend evening movie to watch with Mother once GM had gone to bed. The netflix dvd jacket describes the movie by saying, “Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Middler and Matthew Broderick star in this comedic tale about a school teacher in the thick of a midlife crisis involving a messy divorce, the death of her adoptive mother, and a reunion with her eccentric birth mother.”
Sounds interesting, right? Well the first part was. The first part I was really surprised that I was able to enjoy a Helen Hunt movie so much. It seemed real and funny and then it got too real for me. And forgive me for spoiling the movie for anyone but (here is your warning) there is a dead baby scene. As in she has a fabulous ultrasound where everything looks perfect and then two weeks later she goes in and the baby is dead.
And holy hell did I FREAK OUT. I mean hello giant fear now alive on my den television. Giant fear. Thing I am trying my hardest not to think about and BAM! it shows up in a damn movie.
So this week is going to be hard. It might be the hardest so far. I ordered a cheap home doppler from ebay and I am hoping it not only gets here soon but I am hoping that it is powerful enough to beam through my gut fat to find a heartbeat. I think I am that girl, the girl that will need the nightly assurance. Friday is the nuchal test and my fear is that what happened to Helen Hunt in the movie will happen to me, except I won’t have Colin Firth to run to.
I feel like I don’t even breathe, I gasp. And as I try to calm myself down by focusing on hopeful thoughts I will try to make it through this week.
When plans sleep in
I had high hopes for my weekend, but instead I seem to have been attacked by this overwhelming need to sleep.
Saturday was an interesting day for me. It was the due date of my unpregnancy and instead of feeling tortured or overwhelmed with melancholy I felt relieved that the day had finally arrived and that it would soon be behind me. Dates can be powerful things.
I spent Saturday lounging and then cleaning and then being taken out for shopping for a new bra to harness in my jumbotrons. The remembrance of the date was sort of like remembering an anniversary of an ex relationship. Not really significant anymore, but twinged with a bit of wispy sadness.
Sunday I had primo plans to go to my first guided meditation class. And yet I didn’t. GM got up extremely early and was agitated and needy and I just couldn’t get to the point of stepping away from her need and leaving the house. This probably was a good thing as by mid morning I was overwhelmed with the ick.
I seem to have a pattern: feeling fantastic and energetic, then feeling like my innards are salt water taffy being stretched and pulled, then feeling very green in the face, and then feeling like I should probably sleep for 4 hours. It is a wild ride and while not always pleasant I do find myself pulling out of my brain for a moment and thinking, “holy shit. I think this is really happening to me.”
**Random Excitement of the Day** Mother just e-mailed me the news that there will be a new Muppet movie on tv this Christmas. woo hoo!
Wolf
As in I seem to be the blogger who cries it just a bit too often. Or at least that is how it feels. And that is what my Mother has told me…Too much knee-jerk anxiety and self imposed stress outs. It is stupid and lame and I hate that I keep doing it. I know I am prone to more anxiety than the average gal- 3 years of repeated failures and infertility hell has a way of making you doubt just about everything about your life. But I really need to find the calm in this storm and just fucking relax.
My blood pressure at the appointment today was 120/80 and deemed absolutely normal. (”normal” is my 2nd favorite word after “perfect”) The OB was totally calm and mellow and nice and told me to basically CHILL THE FUCK OUT. But in a nice green scrubs sort of way. What he actually said was that it does not appear that I have a blood pressure issue at all and that I should remove that worry from my vocabulary.
And while the relief is absolute and wonderful, I feel a bit embarrassed for being such a fucking cry baby over here in blog land. I must be so totally annoying. It seems like everyone else in my situation is having these mellow and smooth weeks and I just seem to tap dance myself around every possible maybe issue.
Tell me where the stress tap is and I will gladly turn it off. I want to turn on the faucet that allows joyful, happy, cheerful spring to your step to flow out. It might be at the bottom of this small chocolate milk-shake…
Anxiety begets anxiety
Warning: you know what anxiety below
Tomorrow is my big “so you might have high blood pressure” meeting with one of the OB’s. It will be my first meeting with a doctor at this practice and I am all kinds of anxious. For starters I will be bringing GM with me- something that will happen for virtually all appointments as that is how we roll. But having GM with me always makes me a bit high-strung as I am usually worried about how comfortable she is. I am already aware that she will be a bit miserable tomorrow as the offices are kept very cool and they have yet to be prompt or on time for an appointment. I have been to these offices twice and the wait times were 45 minutes and fifty minutes. I have heard that the OB’s run even slower.
I think I will bring one of our smaller family albums to “read” to GM and certainly I will bring a blanket and dress her warmly. But how the hell am I supposed to do all this and remain calm for an appointment that is all about blood pressure. Oh & I forgot to mention that the appointment is a bit early for GM so I will have to wake her earlier and dress her.
I am not complaining (or at least trying not to!) but I think I am just kind of annoyed at my body for being wonky like this. I wanted to be all comfy in my normal, boring you know what. Instead I am googling things like chronic hypertension and getting worked up over preeclampsia sites.
I have checked my bp twice at home. It is kind of hard to find a time when I am still enough to check it. I am either running to the bathroom, running GM to the bathroom, getting GM something eat, letting the dog out, then in…And sadly my home reading wasn’t as low as I would have liked to calm me down.
What I want is a concrete plan. If this is indeed going to be an issue for me I want to know how to fix it. I don’t consume a lot of salt, haven’t had caffeine in almost a year, and am a pretty healthy eater. (let’s pretend like that weekend of twix binging never happened. ok?) I need to be more consistent with my morning pool jogging and I could certainly benefit from some sort of meditating. But what other options are there? Medication? Diuretics? I want this OB to have a plan.
Things that really freaked me out were the sites that said that gestational hypertension could be a body’s way of rejecting things. Holy shit.
The long appointment
Warning: OB talk ahead
I am back from what turned out to be like a three hour OB appointment. Good night was it thorough. And long. And detailed. And seriously- is it ever fun to spend that much time with people all up in your business (literally and slangly)?
I am a bit scatterbrained now so this is really just a post where I am going to try and get down everything that happened. For starters I waited about 30 minutes in a packed waiting room with lots of belly rubbers. It was like there was this internal soundtrack that only they could hear and they were rubbing in sync.
When I was called back I had my weight and blood pressure checked. My blood pressure was said to be “a tad high” but the nurse shrugged it off to nerves (mine, not hers). We went into an office and I was given a little glass bottle of orange sugar water to consume in five minutes. Turns out that my insurance* requires anyone over a certain weight must be checked for diabetes at the first appointment. If the test is negative then another test won’t be administered until the 28th week. (I’m negative)
We went over genetic testings that are done by scan and blood work at 12 weeks, more genetic testing at 16 weeks…We went over foods not to eat, things not to do, and medications that are safe. I was given a massive bag of loot that included a journal, coupons, books, magazines, and a week sample of 8 different prenatal vitamins. When I find a brand of vitamin that I like I am to call them and they will prescribe that brand.
Then It was time for the rest of the physical exam. It involved the getting of two cultures for STD’s and an internal exam. Then the nurse (this was now the head honcho nurse) decided that she wanted to check my blood pressure again and this is where things took a turn. She had me lay on my left side for 10 minutes and then she checked my pressure twice. Both times she grimaced as if it was hard to hear my heart. Then she instructed me to sit up and told me that I was “borderline for elevated blood pressure”. (It was 134 over 80)
So then things became serious and she told me that I am to come back next week and meet with an OB and have my blood pressure checked again. And while I really looked forward to my first OB office visit suddenly having this red flag is all kinds of not fun.
I came home, made everyone lunch (Mother stayed home with GM today as GM was having a low mobility and low connectivity day) and then began googling how to reduce blood pressure. Decreasing salt and meditating seem to be the go-to suggestions. Any of you guys have any other ideas?
*So here is where I am going to openly talk about something that I was a little nervous revealing. But I try to be full-disclosure here and I am hoping by sharing this information it might help someone out there. My regular health insurance is an individual policy on a major national network. However this network has a horrible maternity rider option. Depending on what agent I spoke to I was told that coverage would never be approved because of my (lack of) marital status, or I was told that if I wanted coverage I would have to pay an additional $500 month AND that I would have to pay anywhere from 5-10 thousand dollars into the plan before I would see any benefits.
This means that simply calling up my insurance company and letting them know that I was you know what would not = maternity coverage of ANY kind. None. I knew this going into fertility treatments and I had always planned on using one of those agencies that negotiate lower bills for self-paying women. I even researched what OB offices had low self pay rates or even free services. I was not overly worried about how I would pay for things. It was one of those “problems” that I felt I would be lucky to have.
And then I was lucky.
I received a nudge from a good friend that lives in another state but works with state funded programs. She walked me through the benefits of applying for state insurance and I felt all kinds of squeamish about it. I didn’t want to take assistance and prevent someone else from getting it. But then this friend told me that it doesn’t work that way. And that by getting help I am actually allowing these agencies to get more and better funding.
I figured it wouldn’t hurt to apply and if I wasn’t eligible then I wouldn’t get approved. So I went down to a local branch and had someone walk me through the application. Turns out my being a full time care-giver with no income (other than “room and board”) made me an ideal candidate for assistance. And yet the stigma was still floating around. I felt weird about it. Didn’t feel like I could blog about it without opening the door for someone to hate on me.
But my entire experience with the program has been amazing. Completely amazing. The program is simply state funded maternity coverage. Any woman that is you know what that makes below a certain amount of income (& you should check your state guidelines because the number is not as low as you might think) is considered automatically approved for coverage. No questions about pre-existing conditions, no questions about HOW you got you know what, no qualifying exams.
To qualify I had to fill out the application, I had to have a document that was proof of you know what, I needed a letter from Mother that stated that she covered my room and board and I needed a letter from GM’s doctor that indicated that she needed around the clock care and that I was the one providing it. The entire process from paperwork, to phone interview (to verify social security number and home address), and notification of acceptance took less than three weeks.
I thought that the quality of care would be sketchy, that I would only be allowed to see a hand-full of doctors or that I would only be seen like twice before April. That has not been the case at all. Most doctor’s staff are fully schooled in what is covered and what is not. And it turns out that state coverage covers a hell of a lot more than many ‘regular’ insurance companies.
So I bring all of this up because I was surprised and relieved that this was an option for me. I bring it up because I don’t want to have any shame in admitting that I need help. I don’t anyone else to feel that either. I have been through a lot of insurance hell and this is smoothest experience I have ever had with it.
All I can say is WOW.
WARNING: Do not read this post if you are in or near ‘The Bad Place’. Sunshine & Rainbows ahead…
Oh my goodness. The Snork is alive! It popped right up on the screen and you could immediately see the heartbeat. Of course I started crying and this giant headache I didn’t even realize I had lifted. Mother & GM were able to watch everything on a giant screen and the sono tech was awesome in pointing things out to us. There are arm buds and a giant head. And as Mother stood up to show these things to GM on the screen the Snork actually moved and started bouncing around. It looked like a peanut doing a jig.
Everything is measuring exactly on target and according to the tech is “perfect”. (my most favorite word)
If I said I was relieved that wouldn’t cover it. But luckily I can sort of spread my arms out and sigh and know that you all know exactly what I mean.
Thursday morning I still have my paperwork and nurse appointment to go over the schedule. And everyone will be getting LOTS of thank you muffins!
New image in The Snork Files.
Tomorrow, tomorrow…
Holy cow. Just got a call from the scheduler that I had been dealing with all morning. She was calling to let me know that there had been a cancellation for a sono TOMORROW and would I like that appointment. Hells yes. Yes, yes. Yes infinity.
One more sleep.
Where being polite gets results
It has been a day of back and forth phone calls. The cycle went like this: OB office calls me, I call Mother, I call OB office, OB office calls me back, I call Northeast clinic*, I call OB office, OB office calls me, and one last call to Mother.
(*of course we had to have bonus stress of realizing that my very much needed records from the Northeast clinic had not yet arrived meaning that even if Fay had not canceled the world I would not have been able to be seen on Friday. How shitty would that have been?! Thankfully I have confirmation that the records were mailed on August 19th. One giant, fat, three years worth file is in the mail.)
So after much phoning (me/them) and pleading (me) and shuffling (them) we have a new appointment and thank the effing heavens it is THIS WEEK! I made a bold choice to be the nicest and most polite future patient ever and I think that had a LOT with the scheduling person suddenly whispering, “Hold on. I see the sono tech. Let me see if I can talk to her…” Sounds like another round of thank you notes will be written or at the very least people will be getting fancy lemon muffins on Thursday.
Thursday- that is right. Just 3 more sleeps. I can do that. Right? Sure I can.
See, what I totally failed at this morning was that forward way of processing that I royally suck at. I recently realized that I have a knee-jerk/ go-to reaction of: STRESS. I have to remind myself that I have a choice in how I react. It is my own choose your own adventure. But instead of “adventure” let’s say “emotion”. So a tropical storm cancelled my much desired ultrasound/OB appointment. I can chose to freak the fuck out (did that) or I can remain calm and be thankful that I am not bleeding or cramping. Freaking out got me no where fast. Being calm makes me feel more in charge.
So here is me actively trying to remain calm. How am I doing?
Where I learn just how weak I really am
OMFG. Just got off the phone with the OB office and looks like they don’t have another appointment available until mid September. To quote the scheduling lady, “It seems like that is far away, but it is really soon!” To quote me, “Are you serious??!!”
I totally lost it when I hung up the phone. I mean how on earth am I going to have the strength and fortitude to last another couple of weeks for an effing ultrasound? I try to be a tough-skinned bad-ass, but when it comes to fear about you know what I totally crumble. I am a hot, weepy mess right now.
I asked if she could have the office manager or head of scheduling call me. This office has multiple branches so maybe I could be seen at another branch??
Why oh why did I not marry Tom Cruise so that I could have my own personal ultrasound machine?
fuckity fuck fuck.
Hoping for a swift call back from someone in authority that can make magic happen. And if all of this is just one giant delay of really horrible news I will never be the same. Just so you know…
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