Statistic

My plans with girlfriend-in-town M two years ago tomorrow were made of the stuff that girls love – bookstore, pedicure, lunch, movie (Must Love D.ogs), friendship. She was there the day the babies were taken off the ventilators, and she was there when my first pregnancy miscarried.

As it was my first pregnancy, and our wedding was barely two months along, wannabe dad and I literally told the world. At first we were only going to tell our parents and siblings. Then it spread to best friends. Then the circle of friends. I’m sure it went beyond that as well.

Then 3 weeks later, I suppose I was at about 5 weeks, the bleeding started. Dark brown at first for about a week and a half. Worry worry. Shit, this can’t be happening. I called the 8oo# to get the advice nurse (this is the place that starts with a K and ends with an aiser), who told me not to worry and that it happens all the time. I got an appointment after work, and the u/s showed that all was still intact, the NP said not to worry, but if [insert telltale signs here] happens go straight to the emergency room. That was a Friday, if I remember correctly.

It was Sunday – cramping at the bookstore, throughout the pedicure, throughout lunch, throughout the movie. “We need to go to the hospital,” I told wannabe dad when we got home from the movie. I passed a sizable amount of tissue: grayish, feathery. I saved it in a cup and brought it with us to the hospital. On the slip in the ER, I wrote “possible miscarriage” on the reason line. The nurse who checked me in relayed her story about bleeding throughout her 3 successful pregnancies, she said not to worry.

I think I passed the remaining tissue in the restroom right before the young ER doc saw me. Another u/s. He very clinically explained, “What you saw on the u/s a few days ago isn’t there, so it must have passed.” I was so numb, not fully comprehending, not crying, not screaming. I didn’t need a D/C which was I know now a good thing. I don’t remember much physical pain, just cramping like a period. M held the cup in the waiting room. Nobody asked for it.

Then I cried every day for the rest of that week.

At the follow-up appointment the NP relayed statistics to me: 40%. It happens all the time. Next time we’ll monitor your levels. I became a data point.

We untold the people we told. I waited three days to tell my Mom, that was really really tough.

The following week my face played poker while I worked at a 4-day long convention at McC.ormick Pl.ace, going through the motions.

Two weeks later we were on our honeymoon in Per.u. The location was wonderful, the timing was sure bad for romance. In our pictures you couldn’t tell that my innocence was chipped away, ever so slightly. I watched the hurricane unfold on the only English-language channel in the hotel.

To my dear baby, You would be 17 months old or so; chubby, walking, talking, adored. Your Auntie M was there when you left my body, and she was there when your sisters left this world. We are lucky to be blessed with friends like her.

Air

Finally getting a breather to post. I have noticed that lately my posting has seriously dwindled from infrequent to nonexistent. Many times the need to inundate my blog with documentation of various daily injustices (along with words like these which I hardly ever say in person) I encounter as a Mom in mourning is so great, yet time escapes me.

I think generally I am doing well. Not well to the point of I have forgotten everything that happened to our family 8 months ago, or well to the extent that seeing pg women and babies don't sour me somewhat, or well to the degree that I don't think of Cerina and Nadia (this is silly, even if I was completely well I would always think of my children). I even find myself just a tiny bit more sociable at work, actually joking with the co-workers and not being as much of a cube-hermit. When I feel jolly like this, I count on my fingers the number of months that passed where I hid my face behind my hair, kept my sunglasses on until I was safe in my cube, didn't even acknowledge people approaching then passing me perpendicularly, and didn't look up in the kitchen. It was so unnatural but so necessary. People even noticed how I had changed.

And I wasn't fazed about news of a friend's pregnancy (her daughter is a mere 8 mos old), believe it or not -- what got me was that I was on the receiving end of another "I wanted to tell you myself..." speech (you SO know how those go!). Her news didn't bother me so much as the whole tiptoeing around me did. Shit! This is not how things were supposed to be! My friends were not supposed to be tempering their happy pg news with me, but share it with a huge smile and receive a huge smile and a hug in return. I gave the whole "I appreciate your sensitivity" line but inside I was so mad that I even had to say that. I was not supposed to be the Mom in mourning.

*Lump in throat* I am so in denial sometimes.

Quick

Both kittens are boys! They are on Revol.ution. Poop test indicates no wormies. Whew! Uncle Moki adores them and protects them from easily excited Kaleo. The striped kitty's name is Kika, which means tiger in Ha.waii.an. The other kitty is yet unnamed.

We went to our support group meeting on Weds. We hadn't been there since April or so. It was helpful in that we gave hope to two other couples whose lives changed without choice. Wannabe dad and I are living and breathing with our grief, and we were able to show that even though the light is dim as you move through this horrific tunnel, it is there.

Time to walk the dog. *Yawn*

Bullets

Update on the kitties.

• Captured the one in the garage. Verrrrry skinny girl, probably the runt.
• I am a Master Flea Killer: 61 fleas from each kitten killed to date.
• They are eating well.
• I need to buy more kitten milk.
• I am at PetSm.art all the time.
• They are so dam cute. Here's a picture of the garage kitten. Isn't she darling!

Update on the doggie.

• Peed 3x in the dining room, 2x in one afternoon. Thank g-d we don't eat in there.
• He is getting used to Moki.
• Moki has swatted him 3x on the nose (scabs to prove it).
• I am getting better at walking him.
• He is sleeping through the night in his crate.

Update on wannabe dad.

• He talked to his dad. Caught him off guard b/c he called the office. Words were short and terse, as if wannabe dad was the boy and his dad was his miffed girlfriend. Fine, okay, yup, yup, yup. Whatever.
• He is such an awesome husband. I'm so glad I married him and not some asshole.
• I turned him into a cat person. Heeeheeee. I love that.

Update on Moki.

• He's been watching cat tv - watching the kittens through a baby gate since they are segregated in the guest bath. Ah the baby gate, purchased last year at a garage sale, the owners used it for their dog. Oh wait, I think it's a dog gate and the owners used it for their kids.
• He's gotten so heavy. I think it was from being cooped up in one room for about 2 weeks when we first brought Kaleo home. Easy access to food and lack of exercise.
• Still skittish. You can't pick him up when you pass him in the hallway b/c he'll run the other way. But -- catch him on a nap and you can hug him and kiss him and rub his chubby belly. I love this boy.

Update on my emotional state.

• Stable. The banana tree doesn't bother me anymore. It's still growing bananas which is very exciting. I'm in the S.an Fr.ancisco Ba.y A.rea, ok -- inland, which makes for sublime banana growing weather albeit a bit dry.
• I've been thinking of the injustices in this world, and one of them is that my ex-bf from '93, the one who cheated on me, the one who cheated on his next girlfriend, the one who his next girlfriend suspected of cheating on her and who told me about it on at least three occasions and ended up marrying the f**ker anyway, has a chubby daughter a year or so old. How f**ked is that. And I stole lemon drops when I was 5. Ok ok, I came home on Easter Sunday morning from a party and ended up grounded for my jr and sr years of high school. And yet. How do I deserve to be the mother of angels?
• I followed up with a potential client after a week of agonizing over it, and she accepted our proposal. Why do I second guess myself? I've been through worse.
• Thanks Julia for your comment. I liked your suggestion about doing something about it so that when the anniversary comes we may not have to wait so long. I guess I am still coping with the fact that the fairy tale has left my life.
• Why does my bf ask how I'm doing and I reply with a long-ass diatribe and she doesn't write back? (Maybe b/c it was a long-ass diatribe about pg women and she is one? Who else can I 'tribe to?) (Is 'long-ass diatribe' redundant?)
• The magazine that interviewed me for a story re: the girls and our experience, is going out of business. The story was slated to print next February. Wannabe dad knows the publisher so perhaps there will be some other venue for it. It was about us, what happened, how people can be (you all know), what people can do about it, how our lives are forever changed. There was bitter. There was anger. All in all, there was truth.

Nurture

It’s interesting what is happening in our house. It seems that wannabe dad’s dream is coming true: the one where he dreamed we had two cats and two dogs and everything was amuck! amuck! there was hair everywhere the animals were running in and out of the house around our legs and each other. At the time we only had Moki, and I couldn’t imagine having another cat, much less a dog (I am so not a dog person).

As 7-7-07 would have it, we welcomed another kitten into our home. Yet to be named, he is a gray and white tabby who is Moki’s nephew! Moki’s sister got out of the attic with their mom and was roaming the rough and tumble streets of our ‘hood, apparently getting to know the gray cat (we think) in the neighborhood quite well.

We managed to trap the kitten’s mom and 3 out of 4 siblings* for animal services to pick up. I spent the better part of the afternoon bent over a freshly shampooed kitten with a flea comb and a container of hot water + detergent to drown the suckers. 35 fleas and counting, and there are a few more to get. He is too young for flea shampoo (5-6 weeks old). Ow, my neck!

As he lay in my lap this morning, I was reminiscent of our daughters and how they were about the length of this kitty - 12 inches, from my elbow to half of my palm. Sigh. (Everyday things remind me of the children I lost. Minivans. Shopping carts. Coffee. Sleeping. Awakening.)

Our puppy Kaleo (ka-LAY-oh, Hawaiian for “the voice”) is doing well. He has us trained to keep him in his crate, take him out for 2x daily walks, and have him sit and lay down. He does well with other doggies when he’s off leash and shows off his fetch at the dog park. He and Moki are learning to tolerate each other.


What good is this blog to me if I don’t pepper it with complaints? Despite the happy kitty events, I was really down yesterday because a support group acquaintance, whom we are meeting for dinner and dog fun in two weeks, is 3 months pregnant. I’m sure it is difficult for her since her boy/girl twins were born at 23 weeks in February. I am feeling left behind, thinking something is wrong with me because I’m nowhere near T.TC again.

We have consciously put a date in our heads when we will start, which is after the first anniversary. Add 6 months for the trying, 9 months for the baking, and we’ll have (theoretically speaking of course) a take-ho.me baby. I should be nice and 37 years old, a fine addition to the high-ris.k pregna.ncy cases. My cerv.ix is wonderfully uncooperative, my cycles magically irregular, heck I don’t even get br.east tendernes.s or cr.amps anymore. I’m bitching for the moment, I don’t plan to give up, but I sure do wish that time would speed up.


*The 4th sibling snuck in under the partially open garage door last night and is in there now. I'll give this one a bath after we catch it, but we can't keep it, I think.

Ties

I have big knots in my belly after reading Sara's post about insensitive relatives. I've been meaning to post about this since Father's Day but didn't want to spoil wannabe dad's day. Now that enough time has passed, the floodgates are open.

I am officially done with my FIL. He is selfish and insensitive and has absolutely no shame for his character. He's the one who told wannabe dad the Wednesday before the 24th that he didn't believe in what we were doing (removing the girls from the ventilators), because it was against his religion (hmm, we're the same screwed up catholics), but his wife told him he should support us so that's what he was doing.

It gets better!

FIL, his wife E and her kids didn't come to the funeral. I'm not upset about that. FIL went into the hospital the Thursday before 12/2, a pretty serious matter that concerned his heart. Having had two prior heart attacks, his was operating at something like 40% of normal. On Tuesday, a day after the girls were buried, heavy with grief [cue bawling now], leaking milk and in pain from the c-section, we paid FIL the obligatory hospital visit an hour away. My parents were still in town and came with us. FIL seemed to be in good spirits although he was still waiting to see a specialist. E was kind and in her broken English told us how sorry she was.

Fast forward 6 months to Father's Day. Wannabe dad called him with greetings while en route to the cemetery. In a nutshell, FIL called his son ungrateful, that we didn't care about him, that E's kids care about him more than his own 3 sons, that we didn't even visit him in the hospital. FIL also asked what we were doing that day, if we were able to join them for lunch, but wannabe dad responded that we were going to the "cemetario", which FIL understood as "San Mateo" even after repeating it several times. So in FIL's mind, we were going to San Mateo to have fun when we should have been worshipping him instead!

On Monday, wannabe dad spoke with his younger brother L who relayed that "Dad's really hurt and upset," and let me just say that L didn't spend the day with his dad either, having spent the day with his own family. Wannabe dad explained to L that Father's Day wasn't just about their dad; that it was very difficult for him, that nobody called him (except for my awesome Mom), and that he wasn't going to take the crap. L is awesome because understood and apologized for not realizing. At least he's willing.

Two Sundays have passed. The message wannabe dad leaves is the same: Calling to see how you're doing. We're going to the cemetery to visit the niñas and Mama. Hope you are doing well. Call me when you have a chance.