second
Posted: February 14, 2007 Filed under: Uncategorized 10 Comments »While there is some debate in the medical and online communities about when the second trimester starts, I am calling it NOW. 13 weeks, 3 days. That seems to me to be about a third of 40 weeks. So, providing that all is well in utero, I am now in the second fricking trimester. Can you believe it?
Last night I dreamt that Wes and I were at some sort of conference and there were hotel rooms for resting but they weren’t private. We were in a room with 2 guys who acted and looked a lot like the Mythb*sters from Disc*very Channel. Also with them were another science-looking guy and a hugely pregnant woman. The woman and the Mythb*sters were lounging on the bed chatting. At first we didn’t acknowledge each other but eventually I started talking to them. We compared pregnancies. I told the guys they looked like the Mythb*sters and they laughed. There was some unintelligible science talk. And then they left. And as soon as they all left, I became extremely certain that the pregnant woman had been my good online friend WTF. We hadn’t talked about it even though she knew my name, perhaps because she didn’t want to tell the Mythb*sters that she had a blog? So we hadn’t bonded. And we hadn’t talked much. We had missed our opportunity to really, truly meet. And I was really mad at myself.
Wes knew exactly what this dream was about when I woke up, because I was just telling him over the weekend that I was not feeling much like seeing anyone or dealing with my friends. I always feel enormously guilty when I get like this. I don’t answer emails. I don’t make plans in a timely manner. I go into hiding. Normally, though, it is because I am depressed. I don’t feel depressed exactly, but I do feel worried. I feel tremendously, viciously worried all damn day every day. I am starting to feel breathless with the worry. I cannot think of one thing in my life that is not the source of a great, heaping well of worry. And it is exhausting and apparently makes me feel the need to hide in my house and play computer games and watch TV and talk to/email no one.
Wes gets on my case when I get like this, urging me to reach out and contact people. Eventually it works. But even if it doesn’t, eventually, all these things that are worrying me so, so much will be settled and decided and worked out and revealed.
The contract on our apartment will be signed and a closing date set and hopefully it will be soon enough for me to pay my father back when I promised to (this is my number one worry at the moment).
The contract on our house will be worked out once the lawyers get all the wording right and when the owners decide whether they are willing to rent the little apartment to us in the interim between us moving out of our place and us closing on theirs.
We will figure out how to renovate a house without going totally broke.
Time will pass and soon it will be the amnio and then there will be results and we will know whether I will have to do a horrible, unthinkable thing like terminate a most terribly wanted baby.
Someone at work will tell me what the hell is going on with a sudden plan to renovate the library over the summer and how exactly the details of that are going to work. Maybe they will even explain to me how I am supposed to select a desk system from a catalog when I have no earthly idea what the new shelving will look like or where things will fit when they are done. Maybe… there might even be a meeting about it before it happens! But that, my friends, is one of the most doubtful of all the plans about which I am currently worried. Fortunately, work matters to me about .000000000000000001 percent as much as the other things. So that’s fine. I just mention it because it sits there on my shoulders, freaking me out along with everything else.
This morning Wes said that maybe I am nesting and that is why I am so insular and quiet right now. But in order for me to believe in nesting as a concept, I would have to believe that there is going to be a baby in our lives in 6 mere months and that just seems insanely, stupidly optimistic. Each morning before work, Wes tickles TK through my stomach wall and sometimes he tells her (I really am starting to think it’s a boy, though) that he loves her and I grimace at him and he reminds me it’s not going to hurt any less if he pretends he doesn’t love it. And I nod grimly. And I grimly head off to work, determined to continue my valiant effort to steel my heart and not love this 3 inch baby crawling around inside me.
YES YES YES
Claim that fucking 2nd trimester, lady!
ok, I know, I knnow, you are being all hush & stealth and quiet and keeping to yourself.
But this is a most wonderful day & I am thinking of you & Wes & hope to friggen gawd you get back to e-mailing because I miss the snark.
xo
Congrats on the second trimester. Yay!
Yes, you’re in the second trimester. YAY!
As for the renovation, we should swap stories some time. I’ve been there 18 months, and only this year did They think of speaking with me (or our new LS Librarian) about the new LS Library. Words fail me when I think of the design…
yay second trimester! hopefully your nausea will dissipate.
My response was eaten by cyberspace! But here is the gist: Congrats on making it to the second semester. You have jumped over so many hoops. You have made it farther than you did befroe. You know your chances of a negative outcome are very very small at this point. Its not non-existant but it IS small.
Do yourslef a favor and get FISH with amnio. That way you will get results in 24 to 36 hours (and find out the sex!). I think it cost $300 but it is worth every penny.
The sad/scary/depressing thing is, once you get an All Clear with the amnio I bet you STILL will be nervous. I know I am. Once you get to stop worrying about chromosomal abnormailities, you have to start worrying about pre term labor and dates of viability and such. Well, if you are like me you will. But I am trying hard to move to the other side of the fence.
For now, at least, take comfort in all that you have been through aready and all of the hurdles you have jumped over. I know it won’t make fear go away, but the amnio is the last REAL hurdle for you. And you know the odds are very much on your side.
My world in blog land is coming full circle. A blog I read that is solely for a fashionista fix today featured Lexie Lew – http://justmycupoftea.typepad.com/just_my_cup_of_tea/
Yes! Very good. I hope your nausea goes away soon. During the 2nd tri I didn’t have nausea so much as a sensitivity to things I deemed unfit for eating or smelling, like anything made with chicken (and also Cheez-its, which I still refuse to eat). Here’s to the strangeness of pregnancy!
funky dream. how nice that you get to have regrets while you are sleeping also; goddamn subconscious doesn’t give a girl a break.
you know if you need to hibernate a little, i think you should give yourself permission to do it. the struggling with the desire to hibernate might make you dig in your heels and assert your god-given rights to hibernate and polarize your “selves” and you and wes at the same time.
it’s like a craving. might as well just nip that shit in the bud before you clean house, and pantry, and still want that bowl of ice-cream with salted almonds AND hot fudge. know what i mean?
as far as depression-stuff goes, i find the word and concept “depression” to be soo depressing. it’s so heavy and judgmental and stifling. sure maybe there’s a chemical imbalance and who wouldn’t love a little more serotonin or dopamine re-uptake but laying a heavy label on ourselves won’t help. i think of my “lack of enthusiasm and tendency towards inertia” not as depression but rather as “depressing”. even though i appear to be on my couch watching TV, i am actually very busy keeping a lid on all the anxiety, rage, and fear that need to be suppressed in the first place. when i am isolating myself and losing myself in tvland, i am trying to protect myself from feeling anything especially all of the anxiety aka terror and fear. do what you need to do girl and you’ll come out of it sooner than if you do it half-assed.
if you feel like dealing with some root causes then call your therapist. i just saw mine the other day and she reminded me, again, of the usefulness of going into the emotion rather than trying to suppress or circumvent it. you know, the ol’ “if you can’t get over it, get through it.” exaggerate the emotion, tighten up your tense places even further, do a little pillow or hand-screaming, put a voice to what your body language is telling you. i forget about that stuff. not that i’ve done it since i saw her on thursday but knowing that i can helps a little.
hope you’re feeling better. if not, be actively kind to yourself. if that doesn’t help, try to remember, even cowgirls get the blues.
hurray for getting to the second trimester!
hurray for getting to the second trimester!