after infertility..infidelity..divorce....

when my son was 2 months old I discovered that his father had multiple other girlfriends who did not know he was married - I was barely able to walk after severe hemorrhaging - the birth left me very weak and anemic and I was a wreck...

fast forward two years - I left the $#%$, got a divorce, moved back to my preferred coast (the opposite one), changed careers, went back to school and am now a pretty happy single mother living in an idyllic small town

why he went through 3.5 years of infertility treatments while he was busy building long-term relationships with at least two other women I'll never know

why it all had to be so awful and even cliched I'll also never know

my son is beautiful, being a single mother is hard, but not as emotionally devastating as infertility - we work so hard to build families and then it can all fall apart even after conquering infertility.... I just wanted to put this p.s. up there if there is anyone who wanted to know the rest of the story

cousins!

two little boys - mine's the younger one. I am so thankful that it all worked out and that I didn't have to be the barren auntie. I feel so bad for all of you who have had a rough time of it lately.

I don't have much to say about parenting, etc. I'm just so lucky to be sitting here listening to my baby make explosive poops - he's thrilled about it also - poops=big smiles in our house.

Some things they don't tell you about postpartum - you can bleed for 10-12 weeks! Oh maxipad, maxipad you are the one. No tampons allowed. Also it is hard to be sexy when you're dribbling milk all over the place.

My Valentine

On Valentine's Day I gave birth to this little boy. He is in fantastic health and very sweet. I won't be posting the birth story because it's a scary one. Suffice to say, it was without any drugs but ended badly so I am bedridden for some time. My husband likened it to a Sam Peckinpah film but I was too out of it to know. My baby's first name is the same as a recently deceased African-American playwright, a rather schmaltzy French impressionist painter and a month. I think it suits him.

pro-IVF

just sitting around overanalyzing my twinges and possible contractions....

given all the weirdo stuff about IVF in the public media I just wanted to share a little anecdote.

A few weeks ago my husband and I attended a very short breathing/birth class at the hospital. I learned to make the noises of various birds and it was fine. There was one couple there who definitely looked older than us and the husband was a card. He was a breath of fresh air compared to the much younger-looking husbands who blanched at the word 'vagina'. His wife seemed very sweet if somewhat long-suffering but patient with her goofy mate.

Yesterday I went to an epidural class at the same hospital where EVERYONE was a good decade younger than I - the teacher didn't even bother saying 'vagina' but talked a lot about how sore one's 'bottom' would be after giving birth. What, are they going to spank me while I'm in the stirrups? The boys (sorry, they just seemed so young) were particularly squeamish about the mega maxi-pad which the teacher referred to as a 2x4. For your 'bottom' of course.

After the class I saw the older guy in the hallway - his wife had given birth via c-section and he was over the moon, absolutely ecstatic. He said he had used the breathing exercises himself in the car on the way over to the hospital but that she hadn't needed them. He really wanted me to come up and see wife and babe but Iwas pretty sure she was wiped out, even without a sore bottom. He told me the weight, the name and all the details. Then I asked who the little babe looked like and he proudly proclaimed that she didn't look like anyone. They had done IVF and donor eggs and he was pleased as punch. By this point we had quite an audience and he didn't give a hoot. He was just so, so, so happy about his 'miracle baby' and wanted everyone to know. We bonded a little about nasty needles and so forth and then he went on his way.

That's what it's all about folks, the sheer humanity of it all, not the science, not the designer babies, but love and awe at the miracles of babes.

and if you're wondering, the epidural class really made it look like a bad idea - for many reasons but I'm glad I went because I got a much better idea of what it entailed.

plug schmug

Early this a.m. I witnessed my mucus plug - a small bloody alien - veddy disgusting.

So now, according to all the info I can find, I could go into labor within hours or weeks!

somehow I thought it would be a compact little cork made out of mucus that would just pop out of my little cervix.

it was more like 1 c. of multicolored slime - and I didn't think to take a picture because I was so mystified and agog.

so something's about to happen, within hours! or weeks!

when?

I think my due date is 2/14 but the RE thinks it's 2/16 - not sure why or how they did that but in any case it is SOON! or maybe not for 4 weeks.

All is well, I think we've got enough stuff, I froze a lot of soup and..... best of all.... I'm in the running for a new job. Not a better job by any means but a job where people might actually speak to me and be nice. At this point in my life my psyche is more important than my ambition and I'm sure with a babe that will be even more true. Plus the future job possibility has on-site day care and the current one does not.

I've been reading birth stories on the internet but they range from the 3 hour labor to 48 hours with everything in-between so it's not exactly helpful.

dénouement is on its way.... stay tuned

not natural?

4 weeks to go! But now I'm getting rather large and ponderous. My blood pressure has also started to go up some and my feet are swelling so this makes me nervous. But so far no one is really worried and one more ultrasound on Monday so we get to see the wee babe again!

I started reading an IVF mystery - ha! betcha didn't know there was such a thing. It's called In A Family Way and I'm afraid it's going to be awful. The victim is a young child and here's a taste (not of the little child but of the prose):

"It was a strange thing to see M. in this new light. Rationally, there was no reason to view her differently because she had been made, not begotten. She'd been no less of a human being. Yet I could not shake a certain uncanny sensation. She had not sprung from the long chain that linked us to our mammal forebears. Instead, she'd been whisked up in a glass by a man who called himself the "family doctor." It made her seem separate from nature, even though I knew the notion was false." it goes on and on....

It's from 2005! Do people really still think like this?

Mammal forebears? harumph. Any guesses as to the sex of the author?

I feel very much like a mammal - and my seins spectaculaires prove it!