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Which is almost, but not quite, as exciting as Gwen Stefani.
Some of you might recall that the chances of Sue/Eddie progeny were right up there with M-preg becoming a canon reality. Yeah. Click the cut to find out how it happened...well, not that part - I mean, it's not like I have diagrams....
Infertile Imagination
In other words: backstory. Eddie and I got married at 21 and tried to conceive throughout our 20s because we're Oklahomans and that's what we do. We go to fairs, pumpkin patches, Baptist potlucks and pop out babies who will do the same. I was diagnosed with PCOS in my early 20s. Among other health challenges, it causes a lack of ovulation, therefore hindering pregnancy. Ovulation drugs are typically prescribed, but those didn't work for us. We eventually abandoned infertility treatments in our late 20s, mainly because the drugs exacerbated the depression caused by PCOS, not to mention the strain infertility puts on a marriage (and ours was one of the good kind with lots of "I love YOU more" and "No, I love YOU more!")
We decided to try again in our early 30s and discovered that, along with my PCOS symptoms, I also had a severely scarred/blocked Fallopian tube. Meaning, in essence, that if I were able to ovulate with the help of ovulation medication, fertilization would only be possible every other month. That cut our already small chances further and larger scale measures such as IVF (in-vitro fertilization) were financially out of our reach.
Adoption was also cost prohibitive and foster-care-to-adoption in the state of Oklahoma very much resembles the scene from AtS "Underneath" where Lindsey gets a family and then has his heart ripped out over and over. So we became child free advocates. There were a lot of benefits - for one, we had friends with children and saw many of the challenges that come along with being parents. We concentrated on the irritating - the screaming child in the grocery store, the endless soccer and/or t-ball games, the hours of "Dora the Explorer." And we never had to get a babysitter. We had sex all over the house, at all hours of the day. We spent money rashly. We bought tiny cars and tinier dogs.
Man Plans. God Laughs.
I did two things that were great for me in 2007: I went back to school to work on my B.A. in English and I lost almost 50 pounds, going from a size 16 to a size 7. And then financial reality crashed down around me, making full-time school attendance for the Spring '08 semester impossible. Depression also hit (which - hey - is why you haven't seen me since before Christmas!)
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adis723 and ladycat777 visited immediately following Christmas and through the New Year. I love both of them dearly, and they both know that, but I was sooo tired the entire time they were here. I thought it was because I'm 10 years older than they are and that I just couldn't keep up. I was also moody, somewhat grouchy and not my typically shiny self.
I spent the first few weeks of January in the bell jar. School-less, job-less, wearing only endless rounds of monkey pajamas; I rarely left the couch other than to get more Sprite or orange slices, mainlining "Dawson's Creek" via Netflix and then callingadis723 to complain about the continuity errors and strained reality of said show.
Wave after wave of nausea hit me all day long, every day. And not just over James Van Der Beek's forehead - I've seen "Varsity Blues," I'm not new. And it was never to the actual barf (and therefore purge) level, but just below it. All. Day. Long. My boobs hurt. My back hurt. And all I wanted to do was lie on the couch, bawling over the utter perfection of Michelle Williams and quoting over and over Spike's immortal, "Oh, Pacey, you blind idiot. Can't you see she doesn't love you?"
And just as soon as I stopped feeling like crap (and found out if Joey chose Dawson or Pacey) I was gonna get up and go find a job. Any day now.
Pacey Witter - Not Quite the Angel Gabriel, But He'll Do
'Round about the time that I realized I was falling asleep by 9:00 p.m. every night, getting up to pee at least twice in the night, and then popping WIDE AWAKE at 4:00 a.m. because I was lying on my boob and it felt like knives, I watched the episode where Pacey and his dad have it out on the beach. And I cried until I actually did throw up.
I met Eddie at the door that night and said, manga-eyed, "I think I'm pregnant." Eddie snorted. "No, really!" I said. Eddie patted me on the head and left me with the denizens of Capeside. The next morning I felt a bit better, so I decided to go put in some resumes. I found both a bra and a camisole challenging, but I figured the shirt would compensate. I looked in the mirror and found myself facing Dolly Parton - the Whorehouse years. Except, you know, less blonde and sparkly.
My boobs were not fit for public viewing without one of those black-out strips across them. I looked like Pamela Anderson dressing up to get a day job. That's what sold Eddie on the knocked up theory - morning sickness and dizziness aside, my already size 36D boobs straining maximum density - that he found intriguing. He may be the world's most perfect man, but he's still a man.
I calledadis723 and dropped the hypothesis on her. "What makes you think that?" she asked. "My boobs are cartoon size and I can't stop crying at Dawson's Creek" I said (totally ignoring the fact that Vin has quite the rack herself and had just called me days earlier to say that she cried because the guys on One Tree Hill won a basketball championship.) "Are we happy about this?" Vin asked. "Freaked out," I said, "but there's happy in there." "Cool," Vin said, "I know where we can get some rockin' AC/DC onesies..."
The Proof is in the Pee-Stick
By the time I stood watching the little test window match the double lines in the control window, my nausea had all but vanished and I realized that strapping my boobs down with a minimizer bra decreased a lot of the giant-bags-of-not-fun feeling. Once we had positive confirmation on January 31 that yes, Sue'n'Eddie, there is a fetus, I don't know who was more shocked: Eddie, me, or everyone we subsequently told. (I think they thought 'pregnant' was a euphemism for getting another puppy.)
A Little Piece of Immortality with Eddie's Good Looks and My Sense of Irony
I'd love to call this a Christmas miracle or good things come to those who wait, but I know it's just Mother Nature's wicked sense of humor: "Sue is getting into a size 6? And she has no job? And no health insurance? Heh. Call me the next time she has sex..."
I'm guestimating (because, you know, it's not like I had to keep track of anything) that I'm about 9 weeks along based on my cycle and what I remember about it. Unfortunately, Eddie is unable to put me on his insurance until October (and if my math is correct - and I'm not guaranteeing that it is - I should be due around August or September.) Eddie makes too much money for me to qualify for Medicaid or other assistance, so my only hope is that the job I applied for last week snatches me up before I start to show (already having a tummy has never been so beneficial) and insurance commences.
Luckily, one of my best friends is a labor & delivery RN and she's been advising me and has reassured me that most doctors don't do a prenatal exam before 16 or 20 weeks.
So therefore I have nothing but time. As well as a sleep schedule that's to bed at 9:00 p.m. and up by 4:00 a.m. And fear - lots of fear. Miscarriage is #1 because I'm not quite into my 3rd month and I had a (very early) miscarriage 10 years ago and I'm 37 and I have PCOS and I was never supposed to have kids anyway and oh, God, what's high school going to be like in 15 years? Robot gang wars????
And when I'm not doing that, I'm picking out every monkey-themed item on the internet and planning the largest monkey-themed luau/baby-shower and reassuring Eddie that the baby is his:
Eddie: You're pregnant? *blink blink* Have we even had sex?
Me: *fuming* You're thinking of this month, when I thought I was DYING. Try November - lots of sex then. Oh, wait, November...that was when I met Jared Padalecki...
Eddie: Well, at least the baby would be tall...
And then I go back to obsessing and freaking out and wondering how the hell this happened. The phrase "Sue is pregnant" makes as much sense in my world as "My cat just had lizards." I mean, it's a phrase I always wanted to use in conjunction with myself but knew I never would, much like "I'm a space cowboy," or "Hi, I'm Sue, I'm five-ten and have an English accent."
The Thing About Changing the World - Once You Do it, The World's All Different
So what does this mean for you guys? Well, I hope that, whatever your faith or belief system that you'll make a novena or bake a prayer meetin' casserole or eat a live chicken or shake a gourd in hope that Little Eddie or Little Sue hangs in there and that I get to buy lots of monkeys and that kick-ass Buffy onesie I found on Cafe.Press and that there will someday be a person in the world with Eddie's strength and goodness and my hair and sarcasm.
I promise to keep the pregnancy/baby/nursery posts to once a day and I'll always LJ-cut. And I might even work in a BTVS or SGA or SPN or FNL reference (my kid's gonna have to learn acronyms).
But right now, Eddie and I are just trying maintain and believe that this almost mystical pregnancy will be okay - although we did celebrate with buying baby's first monkey. I named him Qapla' - the Klingon word for "success."
Some of you might recall that the chances of Sue/Eddie progeny were right up there with M-preg becoming a canon reality. Yeah. Click the cut to find out how it happened...well, not that part - I mean, it's not like I have diagrams....
Infertile Imagination
In other words: backstory. Eddie and I got married at 21 and tried to conceive throughout our 20s because we're Oklahomans and that's what we do. We go to fairs, pumpkin patches, Baptist potlucks and pop out babies who will do the same. I was diagnosed with PCOS in my early 20s. Among other health challenges, it causes a lack of ovulation, therefore hindering pregnancy. Ovulation drugs are typically prescribed, but those didn't work for us. We eventually abandoned infertility treatments in our late 20s, mainly because the drugs exacerbated the depression caused by PCOS, not to mention the strain infertility puts on a marriage (and ours was one of the good kind with lots of "I love YOU more" and "No, I love YOU more!")
We decided to try again in our early 30s and discovered that, along with my PCOS symptoms, I also had a severely scarred/blocked Fallopian tube. Meaning, in essence, that if I were able to ovulate with the help of ovulation medication, fertilization would only be possible every other month. That cut our already small chances further and larger scale measures such as IVF (in-vitro fertilization) were financially out of our reach.
Adoption was also cost prohibitive and foster-care-to-adoption in the state of Oklahoma very much resembles the scene from AtS "Underneath" where Lindsey gets a family and then has his heart ripped out over and over. So we became child free advocates. There were a lot of benefits - for one, we had friends with children and saw many of the challenges that come along with being parents. We concentrated on the irritating - the screaming child in the grocery store, the endless soccer and/or t-ball games, the hours of "Dora the Explorer." And we never had to get a babysitter. We had sex all over the house, at all hours of the day. We spent money rashly. We bought tiny cars and tinier dogs.
Man Plans. God Laughs.
I did two things that were great for me in 2007: I went back to school to work on my B.A. in English and I lost almost 50 pounds, going from a size 16 to a size 7. And then financial reality crashed down around me, making full-time school attendance for the Spring '08 semester impossible. Depression also hit (which - hey - is why you haven't seen me since before Christmas!)
adis723 and ladycat777 visited immediately following Christmas and through the New Year. I love both of them dearly, and they both know that, but I was sooo tired the entire time they were here. I thought it was because I'm 10 years older than they are and that I just couldn't keep up. I was also moody, somewhat grouchy and not my typically shiny self.I spent the first few weeks of January in the bell jar. School-less, job-less, wearing only endless rounds of monkey pajamas; I rarely left the couch other than to get more Sprite or orange slices, mainlining "Dawson's Creek" via Netflix and then calling
adis723 to complain about the continuity errors and strained reality of said show. Wave after wave of nausea hit me all day long, every day. And not just over James Van Der Beek's forehead - I've seen "Varsity Blues," I'm not new. And it was never to the actual barf (and therefore purge) level, but just below it. All. Day. Long. My boobs hurt. My back hurt. And all I wanted to do was lie on the couch, bawling over the utter perfection of Michelle Williams and quoting over and over Spike's immortal, "Oh, Pacey, you blind idiot. Can't you see she doesn't love you?"
And just as soon as I stopped feeling like crap (and found out if Joey chose Dawson or Pacey) I was gonna get up and go find a job. Any day now.
Pacey Witter - Not Quite the Angel Gabriel, But He'll Do
'Round about the time that I realized I was falling asleep by 9:00 p.m. every night, getting up to pee at least twice in the night, and then popping WIDE AWAKE at 4:00 a.m. because I was lying on my boob and it felt like knives, I watched the episode where Pacey and his dad have it out on the beach. And I cried until I actually did throw up.
I met Eddie at the door that night and said, manga-eyed, "I think I'm pregnant." Eddie snorted. "No, really!" I said. Eddie patted me on the head and left me with the denizens of Capeside. The next morning I felt a bit better, so I decided to go put in some resumes. I found both a bra and a camisole challenging, but I figured the shirt would compensate. I looked in the mirror and found myself facing Dolly Parton - the Whorehouse years. Except, you know, less blonde and sparkly.
My boobs were not fit for public viewing without one of those black-out strips across them. I looked like Pamela Anderson dressing up to get a day job. That's what sold Eddie on the knocked up theory - morning sickness and dizziness aside, my already size 36D boobs straining maximum density - that he found intriguing. He may be the world's most perfect man, but he's still a man.
I called
adis723 and dropped the hypothesis on her. "What makes you think that?" she asked. "My boobs are cartoon size and I can't stop crying at Dawson's Creek" I said (totally ignoring the fact that Vin has quite the rack herself and had just called me days earlier to say that she cried because the guys on One Tree Hill won a basketball championship.) "Are we happy about this?" Vin asked. "Freaked out," I said, "but there's happy in there." "Cool," Vin said, "I know where we can get some rockin' AC/DC onesies..."The Proof is in the Pee-Stick
By the time I stood watching the little test window match the double lines in the control window, my nausea had all but vanished and I realized that strapping my boobs down with a minimizer bra decreased a lot of the giant-bags-of-not-fun feeling. Once we had positive confirmation on January 31 that yes, Sue'n'Eddie, there is a fetus, I don't know who was more shocked: Eddie, me, or everyone we subsequently told. (I think they thought 'pregnant' was a euphemism for getting another puppy.)
A Little Piece of Immortality with Eddie's Good Looks and My Sense of Irony
I'd love to call this a Christmas miracle or good things come to those who wait, but I know it's just Mother Nature's wicked sense of humor: "Sue is getting into a size 6? And she has no job? And no health insurance? Heh. Call me the next time she has sex..."
I'm guestimating (because, you know, it's not like I had to keep track of anything) that I'm about 9 weeks along based on my cycle and what I remember about it. Unfortunately, Eddie is unable to put me on his insurance until October (and if my math is correct - and I'm not guaranteeing that it is - I should be due around August or September.) Eddie makes too much money for me to qualify for Medicaid or other assistance, so my only hope is that the job I applied for last week snatches me up before I start to show (already having a tummy has never been so beneficial) and insurance commences.
Luckily, one of my best friends is a labor & delivery RN and she's been advising me and has reassured me that most doctors don't do a prenatal exam before 16 or 20 weeks.
So therefore I have nothing but time. As well as a sleep schedule that's to bed at 9:00 p.m. and up by 4:00 a.m. And fear - lots of fear. Miscarriage is #1 because I'm not quite into my 3rd month and I had a (very early) miscarriage 10 years ago and I'm 37 and I have PCOS and I was never supposed to have kids anyway and oh, God, what's high school going to be like in 15 years? Robot gang wars????
And when I'm not doing that, I'm picking out every monkey-themed item on the internet and planning the largest monkey-themed luau/baby-shower and reassuring Eddie that the baby is his:
Eddie: You're pregnant? *blink blink* Have we even had sex?
Me: *fuming* You're thinking of this month, when I thought I was DYING. Try November - lots of sex then. Oh, wait, November...that was when I met Jared Padalecki...
Eddie: Well, at least the baby would be tall...
And then I go back to obsessing and freaking out and wondering how the hell this happened. The phrase "Sue is pregnant" makes as much sense in my world as "My cat just had lizards." I mean, it's a phrase I always wanted to use in conjunction with myself but knew I never would, much like "I'm a space cowboy," or "Hi, I'm Sue, I'm five-ten and have an English accent."
The Thing About Changing the World - Once You Do it, The World's All Different
So what does this mean for you guys? Well, I hope that, whatever your faith or belief system that you'll make a novena or bake a prayer meetin' casserole or eat a live chicken or shake a gourd in hope that Little Eddie or Little Sue hangs in there and that I get to buy lots of monkeys and that kick-ass Buffy onesie I found on Cafe.Press and that there will someday be a person in the world with Eddie's strength and goodness and my hair and sarcasm.
I promise to keep the pregnancy/baby/nursery posts to once a day and I'll always LJ-cut. And I might even work in a BTVS or SGA or SPN or FNL reference (my kid's gonna have to learn acronyms).
But right now, Eddie and I are just trying maintain and believe that this almost mystical pregnancy will be okay - although we did celebrate with buying baby's first monkey. I named him Qapla' - the Klingon word for "success."
no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 04:34 pm (UTC)From::)
And um - i had no health insurance when Monstrous was born. And i was also in serious denial and didn't go see a doctor 'til i was six months along, so then i only had about four doc visits. I also had Monstrous at home with a midwife, so no crippling hospital bills.
We didn't actually have health insurance of any kind until...um. Three years ago, i think, and Monstrous is now ten, so...it *is* doable. Don't fret over *that* part.
And i was thirty when Monstrous was born with a history of some sort of undiagnosed and chronic 'eat and now i'm gonna barf omg my innards are killing me!' ...thing...which i still have today so...perfect health not required!
Um. Basically what i'm saying is - relax, breathe, eat good food, take walks, and buy monkeys.
:)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 04:43 pm (UTC)From:I'd really like to do the home birth (my brother and one of my BFFs are both RNs and I know a midwife) but my chances of gestational diabetes, high blood pressure and inter-uterine bleeding are increased because of the PCOS. Stupid genes. Stupid body. :)
*breathes*
*buys monkeys*
I think the insurance thing freaks me out because I've never not had it, and I drop it for 9 months and I get pregnant. Eek. But I'm chilling out and taking care of myself and not letting myself have all the sugar cereal and ice cream I want (but, oh, do I want it!) *g*
no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 05:11 pm (UTC)From:I did have that RH thing, but that was fixed by a simple shot, and no big deal.
Lucky for me, i had no nausea, no weird food cravings, and pretty much no 'bad' experiences, which i think makes some people hate me but hey! I have no compulsion to tell horrible 'i was in labor for a week' stories, either.
:)
I had no insurance for so long, actually having it is weird.
*pet pet pet pet pet pet*
*breathe*
*pet pet pet pet pet pet*