I'm only Interesting when I'm Reproducing

I'm not sure what happened. We bought a house and Cargo started being a person and next thing I know I have all sorts of no time for blogging.

But here we are again, spring has sprung, and I have a dusty old blog and zero readers. But the reason I'm here this time is not to entertain, but rather to document and inform.

You see, Mot is pregnant. Yes, again. It's funny how the reaction of people to the news is so different when it's your third child and pushing forty. Well, I'll be 39 in July which is practically 40 so yeah. I do have to admit that many women who I tell are super thrilled, especially childless women in their early thirties who see this as a ray of hope that they too can comfortably (yeah RIGHT!) squeeze in three offspring before they hit 40.

So, anywho. I am now, sorry we are now 15 weeks 2 days pregnant with our third child. We know the sex but I'm not going to just blab it here on my pseudo anonymous blog.

Everything in the pregnancy has been normal. We got pregnant on the first try (hey, at 38 you have to be proud of the little things). Heartbeat showed up on time. All measurements and tests are good so far. The first trimester was a bit more queasy and I took a few more naps than usual, but at 13 weeks I emerged into the second trimester feeling healthy and energetic, ready to enjoy a summer of long walks and generally enjoying my last pregnancy.

So when I needed to plan a trip out west for my annual business trip to see my boss, I saw it as an opportunity to spend a week in a hotel, long stretches of uninterrupted sleep, dinners with old friends with no battles to make a toddler eat something other than french fries.

I flew out on a Monday, a horrific 9+ hours of travel due to the unfortunate lack of direct flights from Portland Me to SFO. But I got a great nights sleep and spent the first three nights enjoying some much needed down time while my husband and the au pair juggled the kids back home.

I told my boss I was preggers on Tuesday. He seemed un-phased. All was well.

Thursday I attended a company meeting which required a long stretch of sitting and awkwardly feigning rapt interest for about 1.5 hours. A meeting followed with more sitting. By lunch I was ready for a long walk around Union Square.

PREGNANT LADY TMI ALERT TMI ALERT>>>

I go to the ladies room before leaving for lunch to discover upon wiping that I was bleeding bright red blood. Fuck. I scurry back to my hotel room so I can cry in private and call Chris and generally panic. I get his voicemail and then call my OBs office.

The nurse on call settles my nerves and sayd if it is just spotting I am probably fine until my regular appointment on Tuesday, and they will add an ultrasound to check things out. I am ok to fly, if things get worse, go to the ER.

Things seemed to settle down, I see no more blood and I go back to the office for the rest of the day. I go out for a mocktail with some current and ex-coworkers. I leave to meet another dear old girlfriend for a thai dinner.

I'm standing on the streetcorner in front of the restaurant directing my friend via cell phone when all of a sudden I'm peeing my pants. Only I'm not peeing and I know its not good. I run past the hostess at the restaurant and into the ladies room.

Blood everywhere. I'm thinking "this is it, this is it, I'm loosing the baby." I know in my head I'm 14 odd weeks and that it is too late for your average miscarriage and that I would likely have to go through a very long and painful process to complete a miscarriage, if I would not in fact need a D&C.

I make do with wads of TP and run back to the street to find my friend. I tell her I'm bleeding and she asks if she should call an ambulence.

At that point I'm thinking, no, no, I'm losing the baby, what will they do in the ER? I just need some mega feminine products and to go back to the hotel so I can freak out in private. I am in shock and basically thinking this is the end and I don't know if I can even handle another pregnancy and generally thinking dark dark thoughts.

I call Chris and he asks immediately why I'm not on my way to the hospital. I explain my "all is lost" theory and he gets mad and starts googling directions to UCSF.

About seventy billion hours and a waiting room full of Swine Flu later, I'm at the ER, being checked in and fast tracked up to Labor and Delivery so they can check me out.

En route to the hospital I called my OB again. It was 10 pm EST so I got a call back from the on-call OB. She seemed convinced everything would be fine, and that this was probably just a small hemorrhage. If it was 1 cm I could probably fly, but if its "large" I should probably hang tight in CA until I stablize.

When someone finally remembers I'm in one of the examination rooms, they come in with the glorious Doppler and check for the heartbeat. Before my girlfriend and I can muster up sufficient suspense and worry she smacks it on my belly and THERE IT IS! A solid heartbeat. Holy shit, the OB was right. The baby is fine. 170 or something, and solid. Ok. Deep breath. Maybe it will be ok.

I've been to the restroom several times now and the bleeding seems to have tapered off. I'm getting that sense of optimism that Everything Will be Alright.

But I also know that even when faced with terminal cancer of a loved one, somehow we as humans are able to grasp that hope. Somehow it won't happen that way for my loved one. Yeah, I was gushing blood and that's totally not normal in the second trimester, but pshaw!, I'm sure everything will be just fine.

They then check my cervix. Fine. Closed, healthy. But I can't tell you how totally and utterly wrong it feels to have a pelvic exam while 14 weeks pregnant. My maternal instinct told me to rip the residents head off and drink her blood for getting near my womb, but I decided I could tolerate it for a few minutes if it meant determining that my cervix was still cooperating with this whole 40 weeks gestation thing.

Finally they wheel in a circa 1986 ultrasound machine and fire that thing up. they look, there it is, a healthy wriggling baby!

And they also see.....nothing. no reason for all the blood. In my half day of attending Google MD and my brief convo with the on-call OB, I think, "oh this must mean there is such a small hemorrhage that I am in the clear." They say there's no reason I can't fly the next day.

I also think back to the fact that I never really soaked pads. They're always using that as the benchmark for uterus related problems, "how many pads are you soaking in an hour?" Well, um, I think maybe one. And one over night.

Through all of this I am certain I have what is called a subchorionic hematoma or hemorrhage. I think hematoma is when it is old/bruised/clotted, and hemorrhage is used to describe that it is bleeding.

So fast forward to my office visit and ultrasound here in Maine. Of course not forgetting the intervening 20 billion hours of air travel (snarky) thanks to US AIR for cancelling the last connecting flight to Portland, and genuine thanks to my husband for re-routing me to Manchester NH while I was in the air oblivious to my lack of a way home from Philadelphia.

Ultrasound in maine shows immediately a healthy and active baby. Strong heartbeat. But ohhhh yeah... there it is, as clear as day to this technician - what looks like a "large" clot of old blood just adjacent to the placenta. It appears as though the placenta is mostly unaffected, the clot is more like an extension off one end. The clot measures 7+ cm by one measurement. But it runs along the elbow at the end of my uterus down by the cervix, so perhaps that is why it stretches along so much surface. At any rate it is deemed "large." FVUCK. I was expecting "Small" or better yet, "nothing."

Upstairs to OB's office where he tells me not to worry. "Most of these resolve themselves." BUT. BIG BIG BUT. He does want me on pseudo bedrest. Which means "no lifting, no bending, no sex (and no orgasms in case you were wondering), no cooking or cleaning." I think he may have ordered full bedrest if I worked outside the home, but he knows I can work in bed, so yeah.

He also added that I have "a mango sized ball of old blood in my uterus and it will have to come out." It may reabsorb, but don't be surprised if it comes out the other way.

So that was four days ago. I've been respecting the orders. We patched together child care help and in less than a week my kids have shunned me for my lack of picking them up. I hope they get over it. I am happy to see the chocolate sauce in my drawers as the OB suggested I might, because in my view of things that means its coming out. And the sooner the mango comes out, the sooner the whole thing can heal and then the sooner things will be just fine.

Right?

And now for the internets PSA part of my entry. I found so many different opinions on this whole thing, I've read conflicting studies, read personal accounts of people who are so woefully misinformed I wonder if their OBs are not just high school drop outs duping small town mothers across america.

So here's what I have found and personally believe to be true about subchorionic hematomas:

1. Seems like they are more common in first trimester. Some are attributed to implantation and something going wrong at that moment. First trimester SCHs "usually resolve by the second trimester."

2. They do happen in second trimester and no one knows what causes them. Personally, I blame 12 hours of air travel. I tried to walk around on the flight, but I can't see how something that might cause a pulminary embolism might not also cause a clot to form in your uterus, no?

3. The most solid evidence is that the size of the SCH in relation to the size of the fetus/gestational age is the most important factor in determining outcome. So you cannot just say, if its 7 cm it is BAD. or if its 2 cm its GOOD. Because a 7 cm SCH in relation to a 4 week old fetus is far different from a 7 cm SCH in relation to a 15 week old fetus.

4. Location matters. I believe, from my reading, that where the SCH is will have an impact on outcome. If it is directly behind the placenta, that is not good. If it is off to the side, that is better, and if it is no where near the placenta that is even better. It all boils down to the placenta and it's ability to adhere to the uterine wall and thereby support your growing baby. If the SCH interferes with that, therein lies the problem. Also, the greatest risk of a SCH seems to be that it will grow and ultimately dislodge the placenta from the uterine wall, which if it happens after 20 weeks is called Placental Abruption. I don't know what you would call it before 20 weeks.

My SCH is next to the placenta and does not seem to interfere with the relationship between the placenta and the uterine wall. I hope this is a good thing. It also looks like mostly old blood right now, which I assume means it is done bleeding and is on the mend.

I go back on Tuesday for a 1 week check up to see if it grew, got smaller, or stayed the same. I am hoping for one of the later two. I am hopeful. Everything will be just fine. Right?

Your Special Guest

Things in the M.O.T. household are still in a bit of upheaval. We've moved into our "new" house. The problem is we kept our lease at the old place for a period of time after our move date, causing us to put off taking over all the miscellaneous crap that you don't really need, but have around, "just in case." So we've spent the last two weeks taking over a soap dish here, a bag of laundry there, a lamp, the silverware tray. It seemed like a good idea at first because we now have 90% of our stuff already unpacked at the "new" place, but the downside is we've made a zillion little trips with the car piled to the rafters with our shit and I'm really, damn tired of schlepping my shit around. If there was a movie about our move, it would be called: Lazy Man's Burden: The Move: The Movie.

Anyway, I came here to say I have nothing to say. But my good friend Toasty asked me to fill in for her as a guest blogger, and since that is the closest I've ever gotten to being asked to write for pay (it's the same, minus the pay part!), I am truly honored by this request. Unfortunately, I was struck with writers block and couldn't come up with anything witty to say. I guess it's better than nothing, which MY blog has been filled with for weeks now.... no wonder the rugs around here stink!

Here's my guest post:

Hi Everyone! Before you get excited for an update from your beloved Toasty, it's just me, Bonnie M.O.T. Most of you probably don't know me, but I am a friend of Toasty, whom she was foolish enough to honor with the request of a guest blog post. She cared enough about her dear readers (YOU!) to have me come by and fill in for her so you didn't get bored in her absence, kind of like a dog sitter.

Except when you're a dog sitter you don't have to come up with anything to say.

So this morning I was making the coffee trying to come up with something to say to entertain all of Toasty's witty and intellectual readers, and I thought to myself, "Why am I ALWAYS the one who makes the coffee around here?" I think this to myself pretty much every morning. Sometimes I even ask the question aloud.

To which my husband replies, "because you're an addict."

I'm the addict!? Well, he drinks the stuff too! And he's the one who always whimpers and whines about his mid-afternoon headaches if he doesn't have enough caffeine. So who's the addict here?

And as I'm thinking all this, my husband is hovering in front of me, his empty cup poised for the brown stuff before the brew is even done... And that is when it dawned on me: my husband is a moocher. He's that guy in college who showed up at parties and drank everyone else's beer, the guy who was always stoned but never once purchased weed. This is the guy who cannot be found before noon without a coffee cup in his hand, yet it never occurs to him to brew a pot himself?

Of course when he finds me in the kitchen cleaning out yesterday's grinds, he's all "Oh I was just about to do that!" Uh, yeah. Right. I must be psychic because every time I decide to empty the dishwasher, make coffee or put the laundry away, he was always "just about to do that." hmmm

Anyway, I never did come up with anything to write in my guest blog entry. But I didn't want to leave Toasty's blog unattended and have Toasty come home to find that you've peed on the rug or chewed up the ottoman. Have a good weekend everyone!

M.O.T. Vila

The amazing thing about having children is that just when you think that you cannot possibly have less time in each day to do the things you want to do (like cook healthy meals and exercise), let alone the things you need to do (like brush your teeth and shower), you discover that you actually can cram more things into your life. You just move items from the need category into the want category, and then you chuck them. You really don't need to shower every day (especially if you telecommute). That gives you back at least 2 hours a week. Telecommuting really helps in this department, as I have had days when I have not so much as looked in the mirror (much to our nanny's and my husband's horror, I am sure).

And sadly, blogging is not a necessity, so when the shit hits the fan, the blog gets dusty.

The shit in this case is our new home. Or I should say our new Old home. Like a one hundred and eight years old. Yes, the M.O.T. household has entered the housing market, after sitting tentatively on the sidelines since my husband predicted the bubble was about to burst way back in 2001.

So every minute since our closing on August 8th (also Cargo's first birthday), has been filled with something house related. It doesn't help that we bought an old home that needs some immediate work. It could be much worse, I'll admit. But in the last three weeks we have become familiar with all things Bob Vila. We've already had quotes or sunk money into painters, basement dehumidification systems (including the French Drain, which isn't half as naughty or pretty as it sounds), mold mitigation, lead mitigation, radon mitigation (we don't actually need this), new paint technology (check out Benjamin Moore's new Aura line), tree maintenance and removal. We've learned how to remove moss from driveway stones, and all about Marvin vs. Anderson replacements windows. We've talked to the original window restoration guy (known as the individual with the highest blood-lead level in the state of Maine), and learned about modern radiator solutions (Runtal).

Oh, and we also went on a 4 night vacation at the lake. It was supposed to be a week, but we came home early because we had a wee short to-do list around the house...and it was kind of hard to relax with all this stuff hanging over our heads.

So there's my excuse. When I have time I'll come back and post some Before photos. I may have to change the name of this blog to MOT's Home Improvement blog.

P.O.S.

This morning T-Bone woke up shortly after Cargo and I brought her into our bedroom while I gave Cargo her bottle. Afterward we (passive aggressively) piled into bed with Daddy (where he was pretending to sleep) so we could read books together.

T-Bone points to a large birth mark on my leg and says "Mommy you have a piece of shit on your leg." Thinking I had misheard her I ask her to repeat herself. She then says as clear as day:

"Mommy there is a piece of shit on your leg."

I'm flabbergasted because we talk about "shit" constantly, but we never use that word to apply to the brown matter that she currently thinks is clinging to my leg.

Trust me, we talk up poop in our house. In the hopes of encouraging potty usage we talk about poop, poopy diapers, poop nuggets, rogue poop nuggets (the tiny hard balls that sometimes escape in a diaper change, only to be confused for a raisin ten days later). But I am fairly certain we have never used the word "shit" to refer to the brown stuff that shows up in the diaper or the potty. Never.

I will admit, my husband and I don't censor ourselves too much yet. So we do use the word "shit," but never to apply to the brown stuff. So where did she get this? I asked her once again to repeat what she said. And as if I were a rather dull looking foreign tourist she just slowed it waaaaay down for me:

"Mommy, there... is... a... piece......of......shit......on....your....leg."

At that point any hope that we had misheard her was lost. And we had to explain that "shit" is not a good word to use. But we still have no idea where she learned that shit and poop nuggets are the same thing. We may never know.

What is Wrong With this Picture?

I'm going to start a new series called "What is Wrong With this Picture?"

See if you can figure it out.

Seriously, does no one in the chain of processing this decal work know when to (or when not to) use a semi-colon?

This is not to say these people are ignorant or ill educated. My own college-educated father is guilty of severe comma abuse. I've received enough emails from him to actually figure out that he believes any group of names needs to be set off by commas. For example, he writes:

I was thinking, Mary and Jo-Bob, could come to visit in the fall.

I'm sure, Peter and Casper, are feeling better.

Maddening.

Thrilling News

Apparently they've found the area of the brain that detects sarcasm (not to be confused with the area that generates sarcasm).

NY Times Article

Isn't it ironic that someone who is extremely sarcastic might not be able to detect it in others? To expand on the hurricane example from the article:

Man 1, in hurricane: "beautiful day today, mate!!" (hey, maybe they're Australian in my example)

Man 2: "for sure, wish I'd remembered my sunscreen!"

Man 1 thinks to himself - what the fuck is UP with that guy!?

I'm pretty sure that the ability to detect sarcasm decreases with each pregnancy. Or is reverse- corrolated to sleep deprivation. Because when my husband and I are talking, I am often left thinking, "what the fuck is UP with that guy!"

Praise the Lord