I am 12 weeks pregnant this week, which is kind of unreal; I feel like I just found out yesterday. This pregnancy is going by super fast. As is everything else in life right now. So, a list.

• Every time I see pictures of happy couples getting married I get a little verklempt. Note to Californians who want to destroy other people’s happiness: take it from me - one half of a straight couple who was married in Massachusetts after TEH GAYS were allowed to do so - the earth has not shattered and our relationship is not marred by same sex couples getting married (but we are constantly annoyed and irritated at straight couples who don’t want to extend the same privilege to their peers, so to hell with you).
• My friend from high school Alex came up to visit from southern California this past weekend - it was so nice to catch up! And as Josh mentioned to me at one point, “It’s weird that someone’s here whose known you longer than we’ve been together.” hehe.
• Pregnancy updates: I’m in maternity clothes full-time now. Some are amazed I have a belly so far; my response, not meant to be self-deprecating, just honest - I’ve always had a belly, now the uterus is pushing it out. At the last ultrasound last week, the baby’s neck fold looked great, and s/he is all of 4 centimeters long. Insane. Next official ultrasound is the Big One where we can find out the sex if we so choose (I am undecided this time) and that is July 29th. That doesn’t seem like it’s very far from now at all!
• I broke my favorite cheap little lens for my camera awhile back. Luckily, its replacement came today. I am excited to take pictures now especially that summer time seems to be full force at least on this side of the bay (still chilly all the time in San Francisco) and we can reliably count on nice and sunny days.
• Beedies update: I am now on insulin pretty much all the time. I am on a nighttime insulin, NPH, a long-lasting insulin that should keep me even at night and on a daytime insulin, Humalog/Lispro, that is rapid-acting and should take care of my meals. I am still on Metformin, but an extended release type, one in the AM and one in the PM. I am kind of in love with insulin - I wish I’d started taking it a long time ago!
• Matthew turns 2 next month. Mom is coming out to spend time with us for his birthday, as is Josh’s parents, so that will be fun. Busy, but fun.
• Two stories that should just Shock You immensely (thanks, Alice!): Report:Exams reveal abuse, torture of detainees and Two Bipartisan Reports Detail Administration Misstatements on Prewar Iraq Intelligence, and Inappropriate Intelligence Activities by Pentagon Policy Office. These should be filed and cross-referenced in the “No Shit, Sherlock” files and the “Why isn’t anyone caring more about this bullshit?” files. Gah.

And to end things here, a gratuitous aforementioned uterus-pushing-up-belleh-chunk pic:

I worked out today. That might not seem monumental, but it is. I have been in a serious funk since November or so - first it was bronchitis, then the holidays, and then I got sick with what I now believe is a MRSA infection (two, back to back), then Matthew got sick with the same and was hospitalized, and I just somewhere along the line lost it. I haven’t stepped on a scale in forever, my bag of weight watchers materials taunts me, and my case of fitness DVDs, bulging like my waistline, taunts me.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a TransFirmer, to replace the one I gave to Erin when we left Chicago. It has sat in the entry way to our apartment since Saturday, before I decided at some point this afternoon to get busy with the rest of my life and open the damned thing up. First up, Jiggle Free Arms (”Let’s get funky!” Stephanie says while not sweating a damned bit and smiling when my muscles are screaming in anger).

I don’t know what switch went off, but I am holding out a glimmer of hope that this is the kickstart I need. These last few months have been a cycle of not-good and my body is bearing the brunt of my head’s discontent. I miss the days when I worked out solid, day in and day out. I miss running, I miss 5Ks and most of all I miss the sleek muscles my body was just getting the hang of.

Tomorrow morning, I plan to get on the scale, backwards (I learned something from watching Lifetime TV Movies while visiting my mother) and have Josh weigh me and he can keep track of my weight and measurements. If left to my own devices, I tend to weigh obsessively and lose sight of the overall goal of a healther and fitter body. I plan to eat a healthy, balanced breakfast and lunch, and dinner. I plan to drink more water than diet Coke. I miss my old self and I am not going to keep blaming the onset of motherhood as a reason for her departure. I am getting that person back, dammit.

I’m slowly crawling out of the abyss of infections and ass abscesses to post some pictures. I got a new lens for my camera (Josh’s mom: “That didn’t take long!”) and I am kind of madly in love with it. I am also feeling so, so much better. After the onset of the second abscess, I started on another round of antibiotics and that really took a lot out of me. Last week was a wash - I went to work on Monday and left around 4:30 to get a follow-up from the doctor from my first abscess. Tuesday, I stayed home because we were up late with Matthew (one day I won’t get up in the middle of the night with him, yes?) and I was exhausted - and felt the start of abscess #2 start to rear its ugly head. Wednesday, I took Matthew to the doctor (side note; the administration there totally bites the big one; we were there for a 9:15 appointment about 5 minutes late and didn’t see the doctor until 10:30 and then didn’t even LEAVE until 12:15. Matthew and I were starving and we were both whining on and off.). Thursday, I was a moron who went into work because I felt fine but as soon as I got there, quickly deteriorated and went home, where I stayed, pretty much holed up, until today. Gah.

I told Josh today on the way home from work that I felt like a productive member of society again. Phew.

Anyway, on with the good!

- Abscess healing brilliantly;
- Love my new haircut;
- Love my new lens and am getting back into my photography again, which I have sorely, sorely missed;
- Enjoying knitting again;
- Marveling at Matthew’s real kisses - pursed lips and all - mixed in with the open mouth slobbery ones;
- Just enough chill and bite in the air to remind me that it’s not always summertime in California.

The verdict thus far: undecided. Matthew’s pediatrician thinks his recurrent cysts/boils in his diaper area are MRSA. She thinks all of us have it (and definitely me too since I’ve had 2 bad abscesses and cellulitis), Josh has colonized it too. So we have to wash all of our clothes in hot water:

which will come in handy when we get our washer and dryer this weekend!

We also have to do bleach baths once a week (all of us), and swab the insides of our noses with an antibiotic ointment.

Of course, my doctor doesn’t think I have MRSA. I’m on another antibiotic, and if my current abscess doesn’t decrease after this course is done, then I have to go in and get cultured.

Man almighty am I sick of being sick.

Matthew, though, is none the worse for wear. He spent a bit of time yesterday in and out of Ava’s crate.

After a couple of trips to the ER (oh, how I wish I was joking), three shots of lidocaine, two prescriptions of antibiotics, one prescription of Vicodin, and a partridge in a pear tree, I think the abscess on my ass (yes - I know. I know) is finally being beaten down. I feel 100% better than I did on New Year’s Day.

Throughout this all, I realized that my health insurance picks up most of the cost of pricey antibiotic lotion ($100 for a 15mg tube!) and the entire cost of a box of glucometer test strips. Wowza.

First off, I am sick, sick, sick. Josh looked up bronchitis in wikipedia (don’t look at me like that; my doctor diagnosed me long before we thought to doublecheck with Dr. Wiki!) and I am a classic case of it - the fatigue and malaise - oh yes. I napped today, for the first time in ages, and while it felt good, I still feel like a truck ran me over, backed up, and did it again. I hope tomorrow is better, I really do. Agh.

Meanwhile, the bearer of our illnesses seems to be on the mend. He came home smiling and clutching a banana. He’s gotten so talkative lately and the neurons are firing appropriately - he saunters into the kitchen and says to Josh, “Hi dere!” It is beyond cute.

My dirty little internet secret - I don’t really like Dooce’s blog. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, but her style is just not something I prefer. However, her entry recently on depression gave me pause. I padlocked the following information behind layers of friends-only entries at my livejournal, but looking back - I have nothing to be ashamed about. I don’t padlock information about my diabetes, I won’t about this.

A few months after Matthew was born, things started going wrong. I was getting more and more short with Josh - and I am being overly nice to myself and the situation by just saying “short”; I was downright nasty and rude. Before I went back to work, it was fairly easy to get extra sleep in - Josh had taken over all cooking and cleaning duties. All I had to do was mind Matthew and rest. And I napped pretty much daily - either with Matthew curled up at my side or when Josh got off work I’d hide away and sleep a little.

I started back to work when Matthew was 12 weeks old. I admit, I was more than ready to go back to a structured environment that at least for a few hours each day didn’t revolve around dirty diapers and latching on and latching off - of course, I traded that for a new set of issues, like pumping and the most important, lack of sleep.

Everyone tells you that you essentially stop sleeping once the baby arrives, so stock up before the baby gets there! Of course, it never quite works that way. When you go back to work, it just stops. You are on the go immediately from 4, 5, 6 am, whenever the baby gets up, until whenever you can drop yourself into bed, completely exhausted. I couldn’t find time to exercise (still struggle with that) and it was just a bad scene, all around. I fell asleep on the El, all the time, and I had to stop listening to podcasts because those would help me fall asleep and I couldn’t concentrate on them, anyway, so why bother? I fell asleep once on the El and missed my stop by two extra stops. I had no idea what was going on outside of my daily life of wake up-commute-work-commute-baby-sleep. I fell asleep standing up, a feat I’d only previously managed to accomplish when in college, during the week before finals my junior year, when I got 7 hours of sleep total. I lived on cigarettes and Coke back then.

November 11, 2006 (just about a month after I’d returned to work; edited from my livejournal)

Everything came to a head two nights ago. I’d not gone to sleep until midnight, woke up an hour later and was awake for about an hour with Matthew. I cried after he fell back asleep. I cried in my boss’ office yesterday. I cried when I got home, and cried some more. This morning, more of the same.

I called my OB’s office and talked to a nurse, who told me to call a post-partum depression (PPD) hotline, after I cried on the phone with her, and she made me promise to call Dr. K today. The PPD hotline gave me some referrals to psychiatrists in the area.

This morning, while I took Ava out for a walk, I called my OB’s office and talked to another nurse, the one who I’ve been with throughout the duration of my pregnancy, Lynn. I tried explaining to her what was going on - and there’s never really a good way to talk about these things, I am beginning to realize, and burst into tears again. I couldn’t decide whether or not I should go in and talk to him or not, when Dr. K came onto the phone and said in the way that he does, “Why don’t you come in, you don’t need an appointment, and we’ll just check in.”

I bundled Matthew up after his nap and we went in. Lynn saw me and ushered me in, sat me down and handed me Kleenex. I didn’t know how to start (I never do), and she said, “Say whatever you want. It’ll be okay. You’re with family now.” So I cried, talked about everything - how incredibly exhausted I am, how going back to work was eagerly awaited and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and how I feel like I’m letting both Josh and Matthew down, Matthew more so, that he’s relying on me and I can’t do good by him. Just talking to Lynn did wonders, I think.

She bounced Matthew on her knee and talked to him about how often she saw me during my pregnancy and that he was a “regular” around the office. And she pointed to him and said to me, “Does this baby look like you’re doing bad by him? Look at him.” Matthew smiled as if on cue. “This guilt thing - we are going to check it at the door.”

Lynn took Matthew around to the other women in the office so Dr. K and I could have some alone time, and we talked (and I cried - see the theme?). He asked about Josh (and called the people who write nasty things in obituary guestbooks bastards. Heh.), my schedule, his schedule, and recommended that I join a PPD support group and regular therapy. He also gave me a prescription and samples of Lexapro, and wants to see me in two weeks. As he left, he told me, “We’re going to get you through this.” And I believe him, somehow. Lynn came back in with some info sheets and said that she’d call me on Tuesday if she hadn’t heard from me on Tuesday morning. I go back to see Dr. K in two weeks.

I know this happens to lots of new and seasoned moms, but I thought somehow I’d be immune, because I could see the signs! I am clairvoyant! Fuck, in my line of work, I am trained to see the signs of depression and refer people to counseling. I have a degree in Counseling Psychology, for crying out loud. And here I am. I’ve cried a lot more since I’ve come home. I feel alternately relieved that I reached out, and that Dr. K told me that I will definitely feel better and he and Lynn would make sure I would (and Josh too - he has been so wonderful in this whole mess), and alternately horrified and ashamed that I would need help at all. I suppose feeling better about that will come in time.

November 28, 2006
So, still tired, but doing much, much better than when I last posted. I saw a therapist before Thanksgiving and have an appointment to see her again tomorrow. It was a decent visit - nice to talk to someone, but I don’t know if I’m entirely sold. One thing she said toward the end was that it was normal to have mixed emotions as a new mom and that doesn’t mean I’m a bad mother.

I smiled bitterly. “I wish I could believe you.”

She smiled kindly back at me. “That’s what we’ll work on.”

I also made an appointment with my OB to follow up and that’s next week - a bit longer than the 2 weeks he asked me to come back to see him, but again, Thanksgiving. I was talking to Josh last night and I told him that I was trying to come up with the answer to the inevitable question of, “How are you feeling?” and I am coming up dry. I think I’m feeling better… but I don’t know for certain. I don’t know if I’m waiting for a magical day when these happy little pills will make me dance from the rooftops and sing from bad musicals. I’m thinking I might feel like my old self… but I don’t know what my old self feels like.

I do know that I don’t feel like crying all of the time anymore. I don’t look at my life situation with quite that sense of doom and dread and panic and fear that I did before. I’m not picking fights with Josh because I’ve got some huge bottled up secret inside of me and I’m not looking at weekends with Matthew with doom.

I’m trying so hard to be easy on myself. That is a weird sentence, but it’s the best way to describe it, I think.

Anyway, with regards to the improvements - I don’t know if I can attribute it to the Lexapro, to the increased levels of sleep, to the simple act of reaching out for help, or what. It’s probably a little of everything, and I’m okay with that.

Things are better now. I was on Lexapro from November through February, working with my OB and my therapist, whom I’d been seeing once a week or every other week. I quit taking Lexapro in February.

I still have bad days - but they’re just that - bad days. They aren’t overwhelming me to the point of not being able to function. They aren’t sending me sobbing into the corner, staring blankly into space, hoping for an end to a feeling that is not unlike pain and emptiness all wrapped up into one. This is the thing - those stupid pregnancy hormones, the ones that created your precious muffin baby, are the same hormones causing your head to go into a tailspin. It is perfectly normal to not only have the baby blues but to have some lasting issues that need to be addressed. It is okay and perfectly normal. It happens to the best and worst of us.

So, there. I said it. I don’t feel like a freakshow. And if this helps just one person make that call, then it’s worth it. Ask for help - you deserve it, and so does your kid. Ask your OB for help, your midwife, your general practitioner - someone who can look at you, give you a strong and hard hug, and help you take a course of action to enjoy your life again. It doesn’t have to be shitty. I promise.

Today kind of sucked.

- Matthew didn’t wake up until 9:30AM. This is after an explosive diaper at 1:30AM, which kept all of us up for about an hour, and some of us up longer than most. I actually had to go in and wake him up.

- After I got him dressed, he puked up water and some remnants of dinner from the night before. He and I have worn more outfits today than is remotely appropriate.

- He then napped from about 11:15AM until 1PM. Ate some grapes and a banana. Drank some more water, had a few sips of apple juice.

- Then he had an explosive poop at the laundromat. Thank goodness there wasn’t anyone else there! I forgot wipes, so had to wet rough paper towels and change his diaper on the spot.

- Then while we waited for the wash loads to finish (this week we had my two loads, Josh’s two loads, M’s load, and all of our towels and sheets), we headed to Whole Foods so we could pick up more diapers (size 6 now! *SOB*). This is around 3pm. He falls asleep again, after eating a banana.

- He stays asleep from 4:15ish on, we came home while the clothes were drying. M falls in and out of sleep while we do a video chat with Josh’s parents. We decide at 5pm to put him to bed. Josh wrangles the cranky and sobbing boy while I get a fresh sheet onto his crib mattress.

- I return to the laundromat to fetch all of our clothes. I’m there for about an hour or so because none of my clothes are dry.

- I finally return home, M by this point has woken up and melted down. I get some Pedialyte for him (no milk today - see explosive poop) and he drinks it. Then because of his cold he coughs so hard that he triggers a puke, all over me and him. Change him.

- Josh wrangles M down to sleep again, poor schmoo. Then he goes to fold his laundry (I don’t fold his laundry because he is Particular) and says, “Where are my light colored clothes?” Oh, they would be still at the fucking laundromat because I FORGOT TO MOVE THEM TO THE DRYER. So he went back there while I made dinner, chicken parmagiana, to retrieve them from the washer and put them in the dryer.

- Meanwhile, I am sicker than I have been in a long time. I can’t breathe clearly through my nose, which is a freakin’ faucet. My throat is killing me and sneezing doesn’t help. I wanted to get a pair of shoes at Target today and something disagreed with me in the shoe section, because I sneezed (I counted) 15 times. The last time I sneezed I dislodged one of my contacts so I had to futz with my eyeball in the middle of the shoe aisle.

- Pettiest: i can’t smell a damned thing. I ate Swedish meatballs at IKEA today and I couldn’t smell them - I’ve been looking forward to these meatballs for ages! I had no idea how closely tied together my sense of taste was with my smell until today, because I couldn’t taste them at all. Josh says the chicken parm turned out really great, but damned if I could tell, it all tasted like cardboard to me. Bah.

I hereby request a weekend from my weekend.

Now five. I want to go to bed in five minutes, so I can be relatively awake for my morning commute. A couple of weeks ago I decided to go into work 2 days early and go running, have a shower, and then go to my office. Today, it did not happen because I had to get my transit pass and the place doesn’t open until 7:30AM. Then, of course, BART was experiencing delays… which meant I didn’t get into work until quite late. No run for me. Never mind that, I’ll just go in tomorrow and Friday and run at home on Sunday.

I’m running again, and while I’m running I kind of hate it, but it’s the feeling I get afterward - I get all smug with myself that I just ran. It’s quite lovely. It’s not runner’s high or adrenaline or anything like that, it is just me being a snob. Heh. Anyway, I am planning on running in a 5K in February so I have to get back into fighting form and wow, it is so hard to do this time around. My motivation is lacking and I am just tired. I have to figure out what it will take to get my mind in line with itself - it’s like half of my brain wants to do one thing and the other half just doesn’t. I had so much motivation two years ago, when I was working out nightly. I should just do it. Just do it. Just get up and do it.

Tomorrow, of course.

So this morning Matthew spiked a fever, which sent waves of curses from both Josh and me. I headed back to work today and Josh took Matthew into the doctor for a follow-up visit. The good news was that his fever went down by the time he got there. Of course with good news is bad news: pus in ear, so yes it’s official, it’s an ear infection gone bacterial. And, this stupid cold has made Matthew wheezy and clunky to boot. The ped gave him a double injection of a super antibiotic and he’s to start amoxicillin tomorrow. He had to take a nebulizer treatment at the doctor’s office because of the wheezing. Thank goodness we have a nebulizer machine at home. We have to rub his upper lip with vaseline because the ped is concerned about him developing impetigo, since it is so raw.

But, in as much as this is bad news, it is good news because we know what’s going on and we have a path for treatment. And he should be better for our trip to Connecticut on Thursday. I broke down and cried at the doctor’s this past Friday and blabbed to Dr. Lewis about our upcoming trip to CT and how my grandmother is dying and she rubbed my leg. So she’s well aware that we need him to get better, ASAP, in order to make this trip home.

I broke down crying at work today too. My boss is totally, totally awesome. He told me to take whatever time I needed and not to worry about work, that he supported me 100%. I am a very lucky person.

In sixteen days I turn 31 years old.

It’s kind of funny, in some ways; I think of my age now and I can’t imagine being any older than I am, yet sometimes I still feel like I’m 16 and in high school again. This is bolstered by stupid facebook; I recently got connected with some old friends from college and high school and it’s making me feel old and young again, all at once.

This past weekend was pretty bad. Well, I take that back - not all of it - we had dim sum and met up with friends, but then Sunday, oh was Sunday ever bad. Sunday night, Matthew had a hard time staying asleep at some ungodly hour (I later spied a couple of molars and o, molars, how I hate thee), so in our household, if Matthew doesn’t sleep, none of us sleep. All of us came down with a cold, starting with the little one, and for whatever reason, the damn thing hit Josh and me harder than it did Matthew. We were pretty much zombies for the entire day. At one point I locked Matthew and me in the bedroom, laid on the bed, and talked to him occasionally while he methodically opened and closed the drawers of our dresser, “sorted” my shoes (the kid has a shoe thing already - zappos, watch out!), and occasionally came over to lick my face give me a kiss. Then the stomach issues started Monday and wrapped up on Tuesday. Not a good scene! Yesterday afternoon I thought I was feeling better, but I wasn’t. Turned out I didn’t eat nearly enough yesterday to keep me going. Duh.

Anyway, we’re just about healed, thank goodness. I can’t take much more of sick.

In other crazy news, our bank was closed - for good! We were already in the process of getting a new bank account and moving things over and such, but there were momentary freakouts nonetheless. I went out on Monday and ended up opening an account at a credit union and after years of doing banking online, it was a pleasure to interact with a person. The first question I asked her was, “Are you guys financially solvent?”

The experience was so good and smooth that I ended up opening Matthew a savings account too, that comes with an accumulator account (sort of like an old-skool Christmas Club account) where money is automatically withdrawn for 12 months at a high interest rate and then you can roll it over into a CD. I figure that’ll give us enough time to really try to figure out what to do with his future financial situation.

Age 1 and already I’m worried about his financial solvency.