Things no one told me about having a baby

I was reflecting on all the things I want to remember to tell my sister and friends when they get ready to have their first babies. I thought it would be worth writing them all down. Here is a quick collection of things I feel like I learned the hard way!

Visitors - just don't have them the first 2-3 weeks, if you can help it. People want to "help", but they don't really mean it. They want to hold the baby. I can hold my own baby, and very much enjoy doing so, thank you. When they're that little, they just sleep anyway. If you want to help, I need you to do the dishes, sweep the floor, clean the toilet, go grocery shopping, make me a meal, bring me a glass of water, listen to me while I cry....there are a million things you can do to help. I felt very possessive over Alex and I got so annoyed when people would come over to hold the baby, and I ended up feeling like I needed to offer them something to drink or entertain them.

Night sweats - gross. In the first few weeks, these were so disgusting I felt like washing the sheets every day. I would sweat all night and even when I snuck in a nap. I still have them occasionally, and I'll wake up with sweat literally dripping down my chest! When they first hit, I felt like maybe I was getting sick, since I didn't feel hot but I was so sweaty. I almost took my temperature one morning! I googled it and found out this was common, but I couldn't figure out why none of my pregnancy/childbirth books mentioned it.

Postpartum hormones - I guess people did prepare me, or tried to. I was warned vaguely about the baby blues and PPD, but no one told me how completely fragile I would feel, all the time, for days. Everything made me feel like I could just fall apart. I felt like an infant myself, a lot - wandering around and crying, incapable of pulling it together. The sleep deprivation didn't help.

Appetite - this has been all over the place since Alex arrived. Initially, I had no appetite at all. I had to force myself to eat because I knew I needed to for my milk supply. I remember gagging on a granola bar, just trying to choke it down. I wonder if this is some preservation thing that kicks in, because you don't have much time to prepare food for yourself? Now, though, I can't eat enough. For instance, it's 2pm and I've had the following to eat today: a bowl of cereal, cheeze its, two fried eggs, hashbrowns, and a frozen Amy's burrito. I'm still hungry.

Nursing - when you sit down to nurse, you need to have the following things, always: your cell phone, the remote for the TV, a glass of water, a snack. Also, pee before you start. Nursing a newborn takes a good 30 minutes and once you get them latched on I promise you won't want to go anywhere.

Going poo - I have a well documented problem with constipation. During pregnancy it was awful. The first few weeks of Alex's life I was constantly in the bathroom with the opposite problem. The weird thing was that nursing stimulated my bowels. Many times I was forced to choose between taking him off the breast so I could run to the restroom, or nursing on the toilet, which seemed really really gross to me.

Leaving the house by yourself - just do it. It won't get easier, even if you wait until he's six weeks old. Try to make yourself leave the house as soon as you can get 2 ounces pumped in a bottle for someone to give the baby. Even if you only go get your oil changed, you will feel better and more like a real person.

Leaving the house with the baby - just do it. The worst that will happen is that he will scream and it will stress you out and potentially embarrass you. That has happened to everyone! You may need to nurse him in the car in the parking lot. It will be worth it to get out into the world.

You're not doing it wrong - because you will feel like you are. If the baby is fed and doesn't have a poopy butt, you're not doing it wrong, period. This one is REALLY important, because I felt like I was doing it wrong for a long time.

Support system - make sure you have one. You will need advice and people to vent to. Make sure they have the same values as you do - you don't want to blow off steam to your mother about breastfeeding if she's going to ask "why don't you just give him formula?"

Egalitarian, non-gendered parenting - I am a huge believer in this. I swore up and down that my husband and I would be totally equal when it comes to parenting. And he is a great dad and loves Alex so much. But I still feel that parenting is primarily my responsibility. I can't shake that feeling no matter what I do. When A is holding the baby and he cries, I physically cannot resist trying to take him.

More babies - you will think about this way earlier than you think you will.

Resentment - no matter how much you yearned for, tried for, and ultimately love your child, you will have moments (or okay, days) when you miss your old life. You will get on facebook and hate all of your bitchy friends who are out drinking without you. That's okay. It doesn't mean you don't love your baby. Your old life is all you know, and now you are getting used to this one, which is a great life but it does mean you don't get to have a summer suntan because you're stuck inside with a baby all day.

Moms, what did I miss?

Weight gain.

It’s humbling when you become a version of a person you used to hate.

Obviously while I was doing treatments, a lot of women around me got pregnant. Inevitably, they’d start complaining about how fat they felt.

This used to annoy the shit out of me. You are not FAT. You are growing a BABY. Your body is changing because it’s doing something miraculous (insert stabby eyes and frustrated sighs).

And yet, here I am.

It started early on, because that first trimester bloat before you get a bump can be very demoralizing. That’s probably the case for any pregnant woman, but when you add the tail end of an IVF cycle and ongoing progesterone supplements, things can only be worse.

Before I started IVF, I was in great shape. I had been working out hardcore and eating a decent diet. I was a muscular 151 pounds, size 8 in pants. I felt great. Not thin, but healthy.

I wasn’t all that concerned about weight gain when I got pregnant. In fact, I wanted to gain weight because I so desperately wanted that belly!

The pregnancy books all say you can expect to gain 25-35 pounds throughout your pregnancy. Here’s a breakdown of my weight gain:

Sept 12 (retrieval week): 151

Nov 23 (12 weeks): 157

Dec 22 (16 weeks): 159

Jan 24 (21 weeks): 166

Feb 6 (23 weeks): 168

Feb 29 (26 weeks): 176 (!)

Mar 13 (28 weeks): 181

I am clearly on track to outpace the 35 pound “maximum”.

And as much as I don’t want to be that person, I hit the roof when I broke 180.

This has been a major wake up call for me about the ways we are conditioned as women. Even though I knew I would gain weight, expected to gain weight, and had prepared myself – even though I had been frustrated with others in the past who were panicked about their weight gain – despite all these things, I still hate seeing the numbers climb on the scale. I’m still deeply conditioned to want them to go the opposite way.

I finally have a beautiful pregnant belly that everyone looks at and thinks “baby” (as opposed to “six pack” or “gummy bears” or “pasta”). But I also have a lot of new weight around my hips and thighs, and I can’t even guess how much each breast weighs.

This, combined with my constipation troubles, makes me feel heavy and weighed down. I walk pretty slowly these days (my husband is usually waiting for me to catch up). I get out of breath easily. I am not my young, in shape, self. What did I expect, right?

But there is still a sense of mourning. My pre-pregnancy body, which I constantly berated, never lived up to my expectations. Now, I miss it with a deep, heartfelt yearning. My C cup breasts! My (not so flat but relatively flat) stomach! My non-swollen face!

I’ll never get it back all the way, that body that I was never happy to have in the first place.

Hello third trimester!

Pregnancy is blowing my mind these days. I am swinging back and forth between emotions: nervous about the baby arriving and sad that I will only be pregnant for a few more months, and impatience with how slowly the pregnancy is going and a strong desire to meet and begin caring for my son.

Somewhere along the line, I accepted that this baby will be born happy and generally healthy. I think it happened gradually between 20-24 weeks. It's a huge relief to be able to say "When the baby comes..." without telling myself I don't deserve it, or wondering in the back of my head if the pregnancy is going to work out.

A combination of enemas (2x week) and Colace (2x daily) has finally got me feeling regular again. I feel the most amazing sense of relief now that I'm not so backed up. My whole belly feels more comfortable and I feel, quite literally, lighter.

I was a bit freaked out at 24 weeks when they called to tell me that I passed my glucose test - yay! only took 7 pricks for 3 blood draws! >: | - but my platelets were low (134 million). Luckily, they re-tested me at 26 weeks and platelets were back up to 159. At 26 weeks baby had also turned head down, which was very, very exciting for me considering he's always been butt down in the past.

I am also ushering in 27 weeks with the official label of "anemic", and the pleasure of waking up this morning to something crusty covering my right nipple...leakage, anyone?

I can't believe it's already March and I'm in my third trimester. Yesterday, I ordered our glider. Next week we have a shopping trip planned to get some remaining things for the nursery. I have a baby shower at the end of the month, and some people (overachievers) have already bought stuff off my registries! Our diaper bag and high chair were the first to go.

In April we have our childbirth classes and a second shower, and in May our breastfeeding classes. I went into this with the goal of having everything possible prepared for baby four weeks before my due date. That deadline is really creeping up on us, now.

Baby continues to be a flutterbug, and I feel like I can definitely discern his butt when I press on my belly. I can't wait to meet him : )

26 weeks

I thought I’d check in to say that I’m 26 weeks and my baby is 14 inches long – the size of an English hothouse cucumber. I don’t know about you, but that’s always been my favorite of all the oddly named cucumbers. (?)

So this is probably about the point in the pregnancy where I could start complaining if I wanted to. I’ll allow myself a handful of sentences: 1) I am big and it’s getting difficult to bend over or get up off the couch. 2) Constipation continues to stump me, and it hurts. 3) According to the scale, I’ve gained 8 pounds in 3 weeks – of course I’d like to believe that half of this is poop. 4) I’m nervous about how many weeks I still have left and how much bigger I am going to get.

I’ve also been having a large amount of anxiety about taking care of a baby. This is unexpected, because I’ve never doubted myself in this area before. I’ve always loved babies. My first year out of college I worked at a daycare with 6 week-14 month olds, so I have a ton of experience with babies and I’m not scared of them.

It usually goes like this: I put in a full day of work. I get home and I’m starving so I eat. Then I can hardly motivate myself to get off the couch to eat (every hour) and pee (all the time). I feel like a lazy piece of shit, when honestly what I’m experiencing is normal fatigue. But I beat myself up about it.

And then the doubt creeps in… “How will you take care of a baby? How will you have enough energy and patience? You’re going to be terrible at this. You don’t know the first thing about babies.”

I really, deep down, don’t feel this way about myself. I know I’ll be tired and impatient a lot, but I feel like motherhood is what I’m supposed to do with my life and I know I’ll figure it out. After all, I’ll be off work and I have 12 weeks to devote every minute of every day to figuring it out. I think I know I can do it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get really, really scared sometimes, or pretty much every night.

Any advice, mommies? I know it’s not easy, but I can do this, right?

Let's just say my butthole will never be the same again.

This post is going to cross every sort of line available. Many of you will be horrified. I am horrified at the notion of typing it. But, I’m going to share in case anyone is as unlucky as I am and can someday find this information useful.

Background: I have never been very “regular”. I tend towards constipation. I never go every day, and when my diet is drastically changed (like when I don’t eat at my normal times) or when I’m out of my element (like when I went to camp in 7^th grade), it’s not at all unusual for me to go 5-9 days without pooping. Or, I will go a couple of times but the BMs will be very hard, pellet-y and will hurt coming out. When it’s like that, they offer no relief.

So when I read (over and over) that pregnancy often leads to constipation, I thought “Ha! I’m an old pro at that!” Little did I know.

At 21 weeks my constipation was so bad that my abdomen ached. When I moved, it hurt, because I was literally so full of shit. I called the doctor’s office and the nurse asked “Has it been longer than 3 days?” And I just laughed at her. She advised me to administer an enema and take Colace once daily as needed, but not longer than a week.

The enema offered some immediate relief, and the Colace smoothed things along a bit for a while. By 24 weeks it had gotten really bad again.

Last week, I went to the bathroom and strained for 10 minutes with no results. I work 9-5 in a big corporate box type of job. It’s hard enough for me to poop at work under normal circumstances (think about Marshall “reading a magazine” on HIMYM). I left the restroom and called the doctor’s office to ask if it was safe to do another enema. She said yes, do those as needed once I’ve gone 3 days without a BM. She advised me to stop the Colace and switch to Miralax and take that daily from now on.

I was on hold for 7 minutes before I spoke to the nurse and the entire time I felt like I was about to shit my pants. The urge to go was so strong. So I ran to the bathroom, one far away tucked in a corner in the basement where I could have the illusion of privacy.

I was on the toilet for 25 minutes. The whole time, I felt like I was just about to go, but nothing worked. I leaned back. I leaned forward. I pushed with all my might. I was sweating. I was almost crying. I even wrapped my finger in toilet paper and tried to manually stimulate myself. At this point, I felt a giant piece of fecal matter right at the end of the digestive tract, if you know what I mean. I thought the end was near so I strained, wiggled, and tried like hell to get it out.

Nothing I did worked.

I tried the digital stimulation again, and saw a substantial amount of blood on the toilet paper.

At about minute 23, when I saw the blood, I started panicking. Should I call a co-worker and ask her to send our nurse down here? I wanted to weep with humiliation just thinking about it. I had a meeting to get to and I couldn’t sit on the toilet whimpering all day.

So I did the only thing I could think of: I called my mom.

She gave me all the hints I had already tried. We were both kind of at a loss. Then she suggested this: “Be very careful because you’re pregnant, but if you put your fingers in your vagina, you can probably press against it and coax it out.” That, in combination with leaning back against the wall, finally did the trick.

Let’s just say I feel more than prepared to give birth after seeing the size of that turd. The end that was stuck was about three inches around. I understand now why it was so difficult to pass.

So I am now completely stocked up on Miralax, enemas, and of course some supplies to deal with the fallout: hemorrhoid cream and wipes.

For those of you who got all the way to the end: congratulations. I hope you never need to use this information.

Happy Viability Day!

Today is Valentine’s Day, but most importantly it is viability day! As of today, I am 24 weeks, or 6 months, pregnant, and if my baby were born he at least has a chance of living with excellent medical care.

HOWEVER, I do NOT want him to be born anytime soon, he needs to gestate much longer. I’d prefer to have him big and healthy and full term. But it’s nice to know that, if I went into labor today, everyone would do everything possible to make sure my little one lives.

After years of us mutually deciding not to celebrate Valentine’s Day, my husband surprised me with a 30 minute pregnancy massage appointment today over my lunch break. I am beyond excited. I have only had one massage in my life and I feel so pampered that he’s doing this for me.

Pregnancy is still going fine. While others still think I look small, I am starting to feel big. It’s becoming more and more difficult to get up off the couch. I started having tailbone pain, but it’s not too bad except for at the end of the day. Yesterday I wore a cap-sleeved wrap dress with no tights to work and I was sweltering hot all day. I was fanning myself and pressing glasses of ice water against the base of my neck. I never understood why people whine about being pregnant in the summer, until now.

All of the nursery furniture we have right now has been assembled and looks darling. On Friday we’re going to register. I have a day trip planned to IKEA next month to buy lamps and maybe some other stuff for the nursery.

This Thursday is my big doctor’s appt. Cervical length ultrasound, 2 hour glucose test, and a visit with the doctor. I’m not sure why I’m doing the 2 hour test when you usually start out with the one hour?

I’m also suffering from some severe constipation. Four weeks ago I gave myself an enema and took Colace for a week. That helped things along for a while. It has gotten bad again, though, so I need to make a call and ask how frequently I can use the enemas. My whole abdomen aches at times and bowel movements are infrequent and painful.

BUT, all in all, I still say I’ve had a very easy time in my pregnancy so far. This past weekend we realized we could see the baby moving if I pulled up my shirt, and that brought tears to my eyes. His movements are getting much stronger and my husband is amazed by what he can feel with his hand at this point. It’s only going to get more exciting from here!

Transfer day.

After all of the heartache following the fertilization report, the transfer was a good experience.

On Saturday night we drove back to the RE (our third 3-hour trip in one week - *whew*). We had déjà vu checking into the same hotel we had checked into three nights before.

TMI, but I was suffering from some really serious constipation around transfer time. I tend to be constipated anyway, but this was terrible. It hurt to even sit down on the bed, I had to sit with my legs folded under me for cushioning.

Therefore, I spent most of the night before transfer trying in vain to have a bowel movement. It hurt. I was stressed out about it because I knew in the morning I’d be loading up my bladder and it would be a bad time for my bowels to start moving.

We got to the hospital and I took the Valium I had been directed to take upon arrival. They settled me in with my gown and some beverages.

The embryologist came to give us a photo of our embryo. She said they would have liked to have more to choose from and some to freeze, but overall this was a beautiful embryo. I know enough to know that 6 cells isn’t great. But I chose to believe her.

In what seemed like no time, Dr. Friendly came in to take me back.

I wish I hadn’t taken the valium because it made me feel very floaty. My memories of the transfer are fuzzy, and I had questions to ask him that I promptly forgot.

I did remember to ask what the chances were of this working. He had previously told me I had a 75% success rate with IVF, but that was before The Day My Eggs Turned to Shit.

He just looked at me and smiled and said “It’s gonna work. That’s the attitude we have to have. It’s gonna work.”

Another note about Dr. Friendly: that man is a WHIZ with a speculum. The radiologist who did my HSG practically wrenched me apart with his speculum, and both my IUIs were uncomfortable bordering on slightly painful. Maybe it was the valium, but his just glided right on in.

I could see the catheter on the ultrasound machine and watched as he squirted Little E into my uterus. I laid there for about 5 minutes, and then it was time to go home.

I stayed in bed all day Sunday and on the couch all day yesterday. Now I’m back to work and the girls here are being incredibly sweet by doing a lot of my work that requires walking for me.

I am upset because I am on these hcg booster shots. Has anyone heard of these? I take the 7/24 7/27 and 7/30, beta on 8/5. Unfortunately any HPT I take prior to 8/5 is going to be unreliable. I have tested every day since the day of the transfer and I’m keeping the tests taped to a piece of notebook paper so I can monitor the boosters’ effect.

It’s a little heartbreaking to see three positive pregnancy tests and know I’m not really pregnant. But I hope that by keeping careful watch on the lines, I have an idea of how the beta will turn out. I have to get the news at work and my husband will be out of state when we hear. So I really want to have a good idea going in.

Thank you all for your support, and HOORAY for making it to transfer!!

The one where lemon bars ruin my marriage

Today is Monday and it's the day I should be at yoga class. But I'm not.

I have gone to this yoga class every Monday since February and the only time I missed was for our anniversary. I made sure I told my teacher multiple times in advance that I would miss, because I didn't want to be a yoga slacker. Also because I adore my teacher and she's the sweetest thing ever.

But I spent all weekend with (literally) crippling constipation that has gotten a bit better but still has me alternately clutching my abdomen/weeping and running to the bathroom thinking I'm about to have explosive diarrhea (which I did on Friday, at Meijer. yay).

So today at work the idea of spending the evening at home being lazy and extremely close to a private bathroom at all times just seemed too delicious to pass up.

I blame my Metformin for the intestinal distress. For as long as I have been on it, I've swung back and forth between constipation and diarrhea. However, the constipation I suffered on Saturday was in a whole league of its own. I felt like there was a baseball in my gut and I could hardly bend at the waist.

So, Infertility: 1, my colon: 2

There has been another thing going on, and I'm wondering if I can blame on infertility and get away with it. And that is...RAGE. Pure rage of the kind you feel when you're a teenager and your parents exist. The kind of rage that you feel when your husband dares to touch you at the grocery store. RAGE.

While I am not currently taking clomid or BCP or any sort of hormones other than whateverthehellisinthe Metformin, I blame it on the whole infertility thing.

The conversations go a little like this:

A: What's wrong, sugar?
Lulu: I HATE YOU AND YOU SUCK AND I HATE MY LIFE.
A: Are you going to be okay?
Lulu: Yes, it's just that I can't cut my lemon bars and it's so devastating I might never recover. AH!
A: Can I do anything to help?
Lulu: STOP FUCKING TALKING TO ME I HATE YOU SO MUCH!

And on and on.

Can you blame a girl? My cousin just announced her pregnancy on facebook with a darling little video and I have really painful shit in my intestines.