10.27.2012

Just some stuff

15 weeks and not much to report.  I apologize that this blog went from infertility to practically nothing to -BAM- pregnancy.  But there just isn't much else going on in my life these days!

Well, there isn't nothing else, I will supposedly be starting a new job in the next week or so.  Some friends of Hubs' and mine have an internet company and they've been talking about me filling this position they've been planning on opening for months, and now the position is almost ready to be filled.  It will actually require me to utilize lots of the skills I learned in my banking career - financial records, fraud detection, document security, and a little customer service - but without being in the financial industry.  It sounds really interesting and I'm excited to get started, it just isn't entirely clear exactly when that will be.  It'll be part-time to begin with, and as long as the business continues to grow it will eventually become full-time with a better salary.  I'm not quitting the job with the DJ, but I haven't gotten nearly as many hours there as I thought I would (they haven't called me in at all in weeks) and unemployment is going to be up by the end of the year, so I really needed something else, fast!  As required by the EDD, I've been applying to jobs religiously for months and months, but I've gotten exactly NO responses from anywhere, so landing a regular ol' full time job anywhere near my past two salary ranges doesn't really look like a possibility.  Not that that's what I wanted anyway, but it's pretty disheartening to see firsthand how shitty the job market still is (despite what "they" would like you to believe), and if I was putting all my eggs in that basket I'd be legitimately screwed.  Anyway, I guess I'm lucking out that I have some things in the works that will at least help pay the bills.

Besides wondering and trying not to worry about jobs and income though, there's pregnancy.  And that part of my life is mostly fun.  I'm a lot less tired these days (and my house is much cleaner) and the nausea has settled down to just occasional gagging, but now I'm discovering the all-new joys of the second trimester.  I still don't think I'm showing, and that this little bulge in my belly is mainly due to constipation because it shrinks and grows according to how "regular" I am.  But lately when it's on the bigger side it looks more like a bump than bloat, so maybe I am starting to show.  My clothes still fit though (as long as I hook a rubber band around the button on my jeans instead of actually buttoning them).  I also have this excess mucous production in my sinuses that I wasn't even aware was a pregnancy thing, but apparently it is.  I thought I was getting sick because I was sneezing and clearing my throat and blowing my nose all the time, but nope!  Turns out it's just my little parasite reminding me she's still here.  My boobs are still sore as a motherfucker and still growing.  Whoever said they stop hurting eventually was clearly full of it.  I bought some new bras a few weeks ago and I'm already outgrowing them; at this rate I'm going to have my own bra department in my dresser by April.  At least I figure I'll be prepared when my boobs start shrinking again! 

Only two more weeks until we find out the sex!  I am still convinced it's a girl, and all the old wives and Chinese gender charts and even my friends and family who have made predictions agree with me.  I'll be really surprised if it's a boy, but honestly I don't care either way.  For a while I was so caught up in thinking it was a girl that when I tried to imagine it was a boy I thought I'd be disappointed.  But then it occurred to me that a little mini-Hubs would be so freaking awesome, there's no way I could be disappointed!  Hopefully baby cooperates when we go in for the ultrasound because I really want to know.  Cuz I really want to start registering and figuring out how to decorate her (okay, or his) room.  And ya know, cuz then I'll know my baby better and feel closer to it or something.

10.15.2012

Near miss

I finally decided that I would post a (tasteful) Facebook announcement once we had confirmation that this little alien is still alive.  Thank you to everyone for your input :)  Well today I went in for a doctor's appointment and we got to hear the heartbeat on the little doppler thingy.  (Sidenote - whenever I told family members that the doctor said we'd get to do the doppler at our next appointment, someone invariably said something like, "Oh, they're going to check the weather in there?  Haha!"  *Wink, wink!*  Very clever...)  I'd been told that the first time they do it, it can take a while to find the heartbeat, but I lucked out and the doc found it right away.  It was very cute, all fast and loud and swooshy.  She went to show me the comparison between the baby's and mine, and it took her like three times as long to find my pulse!  Guess maybe I'm not as alive as I thought.

Anyway, I was all set to post my announcement sometime today and then...  I remembered it's October 15th and Infant and Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day.  D'oh!  Thank goodness I saw a couple of posts about it before I came across as a seriously inconsiderate asshole.  So my announcement will wait until tomorrow, and today I will support my fellow sisters who have experienced losses instead.

In other news, I'm still figuring out how to get excited about this baby.  I know that sounds terrible and I don't want you to think this pregnancy isn't an incredibly welcome event, because it is.  My MIL keeps asking when we can get excited and telling me she wants me to be HAPPY (I had to emphasize the word the way she does).  I don't even know how to explain the way I'm feeling.  I strongly suspect it has something to do with my depression, because, like I said, this baby is more than welcome in my life, and it's not at all that I'm disappointed or bummed about being pregnant, it's just that I don't feel particularly overjoyed.  And I really thought I would feel that way, so it is a bit strange to feel so stoic.

But I am not going to beat myself up about it.  There's nothing worse for depression than berating yourself for falling short of your own expectations, especially when it's outside of your control.  I love that my friends and family are so excited, and honestly when I'm around them their excitement is infectious.  Maybe I just need to be around them more often!  It certainly doesn't help that I'm alone most of the time, and exhausted most of the time too.  I guess anyone would have a hard time mustering up a constant level of enthusiasm under the circumstances.  Still, I hope I get that burst of excitement soon, maybe it will once I allow myself to start shopping for baby stuff :)

10.02.2012

The FB effect

First a quick update: I have made it through 11 weeks of pregnancy!  I still look pretty much the same as I did 6 weeks ago, although sometimes my gassy bloat makes me look like I'm showing... the way it did at the wedding I was at a week or so ago, and all my friends were rubbing my tummy...  Yeah, that's not weird at all.  I just let them think it was a miracle they were carressing, and not the burrito I had for lunch.  The morning sickness never got too terrible and I think it may be fading at this point.  I'm still really tired though, and I managed to catch a cold somehow so that's not helping matters.  And now it's like 178 degrees outside today, so I'm holed up in the coolest room in the house with the lights off drinking ice water.  This does not bode well for my productivity factor.

Okay, on with the show.

Over the past few weeks I've found out that like eight other people I know are pregnant.  Holy crap, everyone must have read Fifty Shades of Grey over the summer because I haven't seen a baby boom like this in years.  (And yes, I too read those books this summer.  Not that I attribute my condition to them, but they could have had a hand in it, who knows?)  As is the norm of late, many of these women have made announcements via Facebook.  Which is what brings me here today.

I always said I would never announce a pregnancy on Facebook.  My reason for that is solely because of my history with infertility.  Getting blindsided with pregnancy announcements as I casually scrolled through my newfeed always hurt.  And actually, it still does sting.  But I've given it a lot of thought lately, and I've noticed that it stings regardless of the way the information is conveyed - on FB, in person, via email or text... It's all the same.  For me I think it hurts because I figure those people don't ever have to consider what it might be like to always be on the receiving end of those announcements and never be able to make their own.  They always seem so carefree, almost flippant (especially those ultra-cheesy ones, like when there's an accompanying photo of a jar of pasta sauce).  So because those announcements have always stung me, I swore I wouldn't make an announcement that would sting anyone else.

There are a couple of problems with that promise, though.  For one, I didn't realize how excruciatingly tempting it would be, especially when so many others are doing it and you've waited so long to get your turn to do it too.  Getting - and staying - pregnant is a big deal, especially for infertiles.  Hell it's the one thing most of us want more than anything in the world, and lots of times the one thing we least expect will ever happen.  So doesn't that give us at least as much right as anyone else to shout it from the rooftops when it does happen?  I think so.  Absolutely.  But for many of us, the journey to that point has made us very sensitive to our audience.  And for those who didn't become so sensitive (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's seen an infertile post a pregnancy announcement to FB mere minutes after getting a positive pee test), us sensitive IFers can sometimes be not very forgiving.  *Ahem*  I am referring to myself, and the comments I've made to Hubs and others about how tacky and stupid it is to announce so soon when one should know better.

Another problem is how damn convenient a FB blast is.  Although most of my friends and all of my immediate family know I'm pg, I have a huge list of extended family members, a few other friends, and yeah, some acquaintances too, that I would like to tell.  This list is apparently too long for one email, as FB cuts you off from adding more names once you get to #65 or so.  Plus, if you try to go alphabetically, rather than typing in the whole name of a person you want to send a message to, it won't necessarily bring up everyone's names.  I think it goes by the people you communicate with the most.  And frankly, I can't remember each individual person who I want to tell off the top of my head!  My next thought was to create a list of friends who I thought might not appreciate seeing yet another pregnancy announcement in their feed (and any subsequent pregnancy-related updates), posting a status update announcement and hiding it from that list.  But 1. That just seemed wrong; maybe some of them actually would want to know, and maybe some others that weren't in the list wouldn't.  And 2. Most of those people already know that I'm pregnant anyway.

Is this making any sense at all?  I guess what it comes down to now is that there's no way for me to predict who will be happy vs. hurt by any announcement I made.  Even if I sent an email to only my family members, there might be someone who gets stung.  Even if I never made any announcement and just let the word spread, someone might get stung.  And even if I told everyone who already knows to keep it to themselves until the baby was born, eventually everyone would know I had a kid, and that could sting for someone too.

So what am I gonna do?  I still don't know.  Feel free to comment with your opinions on the subject.