Even under normal circumstances, I am what you might call a "picky eater." Always have been - there are some foods I've just never liked since I was a baby. I have a really strong gag reflex, and for some reason texture is a big thing to me (mashed potatoes have no consistency, for example - and I usually put potato chips for texture on a lunch meat sandwich, like turkey, if I eat one). I tend to find a "safe food" - I love lots of different Mexican dishes, for example, but tend to stick to enchiladas and rice. You can almost bet money that I'll get alfredo if I go to an Italian restaurant. Indian food, I get curry. Safe foods.


This has proven to make eating during pregnancy a little limiting. My peri doesn't want me throwing up since it puts pressure on the cervix (and I can only take so much Zofran and Phenergen), and almost any food that's rich will send me kneeling. Barbecue sauce guarantees a bad night. My beloved alfredo is out, as is red sauce - leaving me with pretty much oil or butter sauces at Italian restaurants. Mexican food is a crap shoot - it entirely depends on what my stomach is doing that day. My poor husband has had to adapt to eating nothing much more exciting than chicken nuggets the past couple of months. I'm so lucky that he is putting up with me.

All of this just reminds me of how blessed and excited I am to feel like crap, though, and how I will gladly feel like crap the whole pregnancy if it means that the baby is safe. (Granted, that doesn't really change the fact that I feel like crap.) I got either a super-bad case of morning sickness or some light flu yesterday and had to go home from work, or else the options were that I was either going to throw up or fall asleep at my desk (neither of which would have impressed my coworkers much). I'm just going to have to find some way to adapt better - I can't sleep through the night, so I may have to just start going to bed even earlier.

Well, after talking with my grief counselor and my husband, I made a decision about telling my family about the baby at our Christmas celebration at the loud restaurant (see yesterday's blog for history).


I should probably give a little history as to why this has been an issue for me at all – I don’t need to go into the full history here, but I’ll just give a couple of brief examples that backup my decision. I really, really want to keep this pregnancy quiet with the general public until we’re at a point (probably after the cerclage) where we feel comfortable sharing. Seeing as how this is OUR pregnancy and baby, I don’t feel like that’s an unreasonable request. I made a similar request when I was pregnant with Maddie, but my mom (whom I love) instantly told everyone in our family, as well as her friends and students in her college class (she even showed them pictures of my ultrasounds, even though I’ve never met any of them) as early as 6 weeks into the pregnancy, all for attention. When we found out Maddie was a little girl, I called her first and let her know. She instantly called my grandfather, who was fishing with my dad (who was second on my list), and “accidentally” told them before I had a chance to call Dad and tell him her gender. She wanted to be the one to get the attention of telling the news. With this pregnancy, I want the opportunity for my husband and I to share what we want with whom we want. We want that joy. And we want to do it when we know the baby is safely in the second trimester, because we don’t want to deal with all of the broken expectations and questions if (and I pray it doesn’t) something goes wrong.

So, we’ve decided to just not go to the Christmas celebration, and we’ll just tell my family after the cerclage. Past behavior usually predicts future behavior – and, even with the speech I have prepared, I don’t think that I can trust them with this. I hate saying that, but it’s true. Since my husband will be starting a job and unable to get time off of work for my cerclage, I have told my dad so that he can pick me up from the hospital the next morning if need be, and my husband’s mom will be visiting from California – she plans on staying with me overnight in the hospital. I don’t need any more stress. I would just go to Christmas with everyone and not tell them, but the stress of this is getting me worked up (which I can’t have) – and, more notably, there’s not really any way I could hide the bump. I’m a little under 5’2” and fairly small, so I’m showing quite a bit already (and have been for a few weeks). I hope I’m not a horrible person for doing this.

I don’t think that most people who meet me think of me as uber-ladylike. I grew up with a lot of guy friends, so I’m pretty used to conversations ranging on different topics. However, when it comes to myself, I really only participate in what I like to call “polite conversation” most of the time.


Let me illustrate. When my OB asks me about my regularity during pregnancy, I can barely squeak out an answer. I made my parents go and get any feminine products I might need throughout the entirety of high school, while I waited in the car. So, when the nurse at the peri’s office asked if I track cervical mucus, I think she could tell the answer by the horrified look on my face. I’m not a prude - I don’t mind if people talk about these things to me, but it’s certainly not something about which I’m going to share (or even think) willingly, even with my doctor if I can avoid it.

I just bring this up because it is so weird to compare this with what you have to “just get used to” when doing IVF and infertility treatments. I don’t really have any problems sharing what I’m injecting into my body today, what the process involves, and so on. I’m not all that comfortable with the constant stream of new people checking out my goods, but it just seems so weird that I will do that, and not talk about poop. Hunh.

Things are going well. 10w3d pregnant today. I live in a constant state of fatigue and nausea, but I’m happy to have the opportunity. I have my next OB appointment a week from today. We had planned on telling my family on New Year’s (they postponed our Christmas due to weather), but now they want to get together at a restaurant in town that, while delicious, most closely resembles a cattle barn in terms of noise. I’m not sharing news like this in that environment. They may just find out after the cerclage, or whenever I choose to tell them.  We rarely get together anymore, so it's not like they'll see my stomach that is protruding more and more daily (I've been in maternity pants for three weeks).  I'm not sure what to do.

I am normally a big sleep-talker, even under normal conditions. However, I have been on Ambien (a sleep medicine) since losing Maddie. My OB said it was 100% safe during pregnancy and breast-feeding, and it’s really the only way that I can get to sleep at all at night. To add to my sleep-talking, it tends to loop me out for just a little while if I’m still awake when it kicks in.


My husband was staying up late the other night, so he came and tucked me in after I’d taken the pill and been in bed for a while. I have absolutely no recollection of the entire conversation, or even of him coming into the bedroom at any point, but apparently I began to tell him my list of what we needed at the grocery store when he went the next day in a very lucid manner. He gently pointed out that it was probably a conversation for the next day – at which point, I apparently burst into tears and told him how worried I am about the baby, about losing the pregnancy, about something happening to him or her, about my body failing the baby again like it failed Maddie.

I wasn’t really surprised when he told me this the next morning, and I don’t think this was exactly a coincidence – I cry with worry every single day that something is going to happen, I pray I don’t know how many times a day that the baby is safe, I have all of these concerns… but I try not to share them with anyone, because how many people in our everyday lives really understand? I know every pregnant mother worries about their baby, but I have held my baby girl and then had to say goodbye. There’s no “chilling out” about a pregnancy after doing that, but that’s what people like to think is helpful advice. I don’t even want to burden my husband with this worry, because it’s just too much. I don’t just worry about losing the baby – I worry about even after if he/she’s born healthy. I worry that I won’t be able to protect the child all of the time, and something will happen (watching a couple of Law & Order: SVU marathons recently admittedly didn’t help this much). I try and just keep the crazy inside, but I’m not surprised that this came out while I was asleep and unable to control it. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

I hate negative posts.  I try not to make them.

Yesterday was a little rough.  I felt just awful - the morning sickness was ramped up so that I slept or was sick all day (for which I am incredibly grateful, because it's a miracle I'm pregnant).  JTD and I didn't go anywhere, because this was the fourth holiday in a row that my family decided to postpone or cancel at the last minute (which kind of screws up making plans with our other families).  I was having a pretty hard time with not having Maddie here, so I called my dad's side of the family - my grandma (the one who recently found out that she had breast cancer) found out on Christmas Eve that the prognosis wasn't very good, so I heard her cry for the first time since my grandfather died, back when I was 5. 

After all of that, we sat at home and kind of tried to focus on the good things, because that wasn't any way to spend Christmas.  We are so grateful for each other, for his new job, for Maddie being safe and happy, for this amazing chance to hopefully bring this child into this world.  All in all, we are just so blessed.  This may not have been the Christmas we'd planned, but we are grateful for the oppportunties we've been given.

Hope everyone had a very merry holiday.

Yesterday was a great day. My husband got offered a job that he had been really wanting, and will start on January 4. He had been working at a place that made him miserable, so we’re very excited. A lot of this year has been hard (in ways I can’t number), but we’re so blessed in so many ways.


I do have to admit that I am a little tired of people pointing that out to me because it’s Christmas, however. I know I’m blessed - I know exactly what has happened in my life (better than anyone else), but I’m allowed to mourn. I’m allowed to be sad and want my daughter back. I don’t really know anyone in my everyday life who has been through this, and so nobody really has the right to tell me how to feel. I just smile and say, “Thank you,” but I am a little frustrated with that forced cheer from others.

That’s not a very merry thought. Here’s a better one – I hope that everyone has a safe, warm Christmas, filled with love and warm memories. May the new decade be a good one for everyone.

Yesterday was a great day. My husband got offered a job that he had been really wanting, and will start on January 4. He had been working at a place that made him miserable, so we’re very excited. A lot of this year has been hard (in ways I can’t number), but we’re so blessed in so many ways.


I do have to admit that I am a little tired of people pointing that out to me because it’s Christmas, however. I know I’m blessed, but I’m allowed to mourn. I’m allowed to be sad and want my daughter back. I don’t really know anyone in my everyday life who has been through this, and so nobody really has the right to tell me how to feel. I just smile and say, “Thank you,” but I am a little frustrated with that forced cheer.

That’s not a very merry thought. Here’s a better one – I hope that everyone has a safe, warm Christmas, filled with love and warm memories. May the new decade be a good one for everyone.

I didn’t post anything yesterday because I was at home with my feet up. I know I’m probably worrying too much about certain symptoms, but I’m just nervous.


Hoping that everyone has the merriest of Christmases!

There are so many times that it feels like the rest of the world has moved on from remembering Maddie. While I understand this is normal, and want to honor her memory as I can, I was greatly moved this past week by two actions.


A friend and his wife who have been rocks throughout everything sent us a Christmas present on Friday. I got it home, and we were so touched to see this (sorry for the crummy cell phone picture):



My husband’s first comment was that the little nose was mine and Maddie’s, as were the cheeks. We had decided for a bunch of reasons not to put the tree up this year, but this is going to hold a special place year-round, anyway.

A coworker also told me when he gave us our Christmas card that he had donated in Maddie’s name to the March of Dimes. This really, really touched my heart.

I am so lucky that my daughter inspires love like this. I’m so blessed to have such a gift in my life.

A few days before the embryo transfer, I turned to my husband as we were going to bed and said, “If this works, we need to come up with a name that either starts with an ‘H’ or a ‘J.” He just looked at me and asked why. I explained that I thought it would be fun to nickname the baby with those letters in the Spanish alphabet – call the baby “Hache” (pronounced “ah-chay”) if we chose an H name, or “Jota” (pronounced “ho-ta”) if we chose a J name. He shook his head, told me he was not on board, and we went to bed. (To his defense, I was mostly just having fun. He’s Dutch/Irish and I’m German/British – it’s not like we have a rich Latino background. I just took a lot of Spanish in high school.)


Well, I’ve still taken to calling the baby “Jota” to irk him, even though we don’t even have any J names on the list. :)  So, as I promised yesterday evening, here is the 3D picture of Baby Jota (the 2D ones were a little fuzzy and/or involved the baby standing on his/her head):

Just got home from a day full of doctors appointments!

I was a little afraid of the way the day started out.  I woke up around 4 a.m. with horrible morning sickness - I was getting sick so hard that I have broken blood vessels all over my face today.  Then I just remembered that morning sickness is a GOOD sign, and was able to sleep again.

My perinatologist appointment went really well.  The cerclage is scheduled for Monday, January 18 at 9 a.m. - I'll be 13 weeks and 2 days at that time.  We'll be doing the Shirodkar (my peri only does those), I'll be staying in the hospital overnight for observation, and I'll have the choice of a spinal or general anesthesia.  After being told by three doctors today that it wouldn't hurt the baby, I'll probably opt for general - I'm kind of high-strung, and I'm pretty sure the doctor would want to punch me if I were awake.  My husband's mom will be in town from California at that time, so she'll be able to stay home with me.  A quick exam showed that I'm doing well right now (and two new people are on the list now who have seen my girl parts - awesome!).  We did a regular belly ultrasound there - the heartbeat was 173 bpm, and I was measuring 8 weeks 6 days (1 day ahead of where I am - which is a first for me!).  I got a wonderful 3D shot of baby that I'll try and scan tomorrow and post.

My RE appointment went well.  I have just the most wonderful fertility doctor on Earth - he gave me two huge hugs and let me know I'm his favorite patient.  :)  We talked a bit about the cerclage, and we did a TV ultrasound.  Baby was still measuring 8w6d, and the heartbeat there was 183 bpm.  The baby was standing on its head for that whole ultrasound, which made me laugh!  He graduated me - we're doing great!

The only sad part of today was filling out all of the forms at the peri's office.  There were a couple of different places where they ask, "How many pregnancies have you had (including this one)?"  I wrote in 3.  The next question was, "How many have resulted in live births?"  Sigh.  Let's pray that the answer changes from 0 to 1 next July - but there wasn't a better way to ask that?

All in all, a great day.  I knew that praying a lot and wearing my lucky underwear had to work out.  :)

A friend asked me the other day for an update on the pregnancy, and how things were going. I explained where we were at with appointments, roughly when I thought the cerclage would be, how our last ultrasound went. He listened closely, and then said, “Wow, it sounds like everything is really going according to the best case scenario.” For some reason, that struck me. I get so focused on orchestrating shots and appointments, trying to make sure I’m grateful for every moment, worrying and overanalyzing… that I forget that everything is (knock on every bit of wood I can find) going the best it possibly could. Even though the odds (and finances!) were against it, medicine and a miracle came together. I’ve got a fantastic OB, a great doctor who is going to do my cerclage, and all I can do at this point is just trust that God put us on this path for a reason.


Tomorrow afternoon, I have a couple of appointments. I’ll go in the early afternoon to meet my high-risk OB and probably schedule the cerclage. I’ve done a lot of research on him since deciding on the Shirodkar, and he’s fantastic – does a lot of research studies on pre-term labor, went to great schools, etc. I’ll then have my 8.5 week ultrasound at my RE’s office – I’m so nervous and excited, I want to make sure everything is okay, and just keep worrying that it’s not. I’ll try and post in the evening when I get home and have more info…

I had someone recently tell me how well they thought I was doing with Maddie’s passing. I just smiled and said thank you, but thought about how deceiving appearances are.


There is, whether it’s right or not, a statute of limitations on how long you can “acceptably” bring up your child’s death to people. Facebook status updates, mentioning my child in conversation and e-mail, etc. – there’s a finite amount of time where that is something that I personally feel comfortable doing. What happened to my baby (and so many others) is a horrible, awful tragedy – but it’s my husband’s and my tragedy. It’s not really anyone else’s. I don’t want people to remember Maddie out of some dull sense of duty, or because I force them into it – I want them to remember her out of love, and to honor her beautiful memory. I don’t want to force people to pity me – that doesn’t do anything good for either of us.

So, I’ve taken to usually not mentioning Maddie unless it’s truly appropriate to the conversation. If someone asks me how I’m doing, I say “fine.” I will take care of myself as I need, but people don’t necessarily need to know the full answer – they don’t want it when they ask that question. They don’t need to know that I cry for her every day – it doesn’t increase or decrease my memories of and love for her. There are some relationships that become closer and some that fall away after the loss of a child, but in time, it’s natural that the topic fades from others’ minds. All I need to do is make sure she never fades from mine.

Cheryl was really sweet, and asked in my comments about info on the cancer I've had previously.  I didn't want her to have to go wading through other comments for my response, so I figured I'd make a quick blog about it.

One of the reasons I really am strongly recommended every year to get a flu shot is because I had cancer a couple of times.  The tumor first showed up when I was about 8 years old, but was misdiagnosed until it was removed when I was 16.  I then had a recurrance at age 22, at which time I had radiation.  It's a very rare type of cancer, and is incredibly rare in children - it's a cancer of the salivary gland, and I was only the 16th child ever recorded with it.  Luckily, it's an incredibly slow-growing type of cancer - but it means that, instead of chance of recurrance going down at 5 years, it increases for me.

I had a PET scan (a very intensive full-body scan that's supposed to find areas of high metabolization, which often indicates malignancies) this summer that came back clean, so that's good news.  It's unlikely that the cancers had anything to do with my infertility, since I exhibited the symptoms of PCOS in my teen years, before there was any spreading or treatment.  However, it does make me more paranoid - which explains why I am a constant worrier.  :)

I think there are quiet days, days when there aren’t a ton of words.


Although it was a little frustrating to be stuck inside the last three days, it was a relief to be on virtual bedrest. I felt like the baby was more secure, safer. I went to the flu shot clinic today at work. I went and got an H1N1 vaccine about four weeks ago and everything was fine, but I panicked a little then and I’m panicking a little again now. It’s totally irrational – I know that the vaccine isn’t new (just the dead viruses), it’s been used on millions of pregnant women over the years, there are no adjuvants, I’ve been told to get it by two doctors, and I even have a friend who’s finishing up his doctorate in immunology. I know that there’s no reason to be upset, but I just have this tiny fear that my very, very light egg allergy is going to cause problems, or that the baby will react poorly, or… something. I know that I won’t be content until this baby is born safe into my arms, but I’m just fighting to be reasonable sometimes.

Thanks, all, for letting me vent. :)

Day 3 of being snowed in.  This blog may turn into a retelling of "The Shining" here soon...

Ugh.  Day 2 of being a shut-in due to a monster blizzard.  Luckily I can work from home (and have been busy), but this is frustrating.  I understand that there is a chance of being in a situation like this if I get put on bedrest, but I'm sick of these walls!

Hope everyone is staying warm.

I've had dreams in the past, since Maddie's passing, that she was with me in the form of a butterfly.  It may be a metaphor that has been used before, but it brings me comfort. 

This is just one of the many reasons that it just touched my heart when Bree made this beautiful butterfly for my little girl:

Thank you so much, Bree, for remembering my little girl.  You're an amazing woman.

Yesterday was pretty rough. I think it might be because Maddie’s 5-month birthday is today, I’m not sure. I feel weak to admit that I had one of those days where I laid in bed for a while and cried for her. I am so grateful for this new pregnancy, and so very blessed – but it doesn’t make what happened to Maddie go away. It doesn’t make me feel better about all of that, it just makes me feel different. More guilty, more… I don’t know. Just more.


Happy 5-month birthday, Maddie. I love you.

On Monday, it will have have been five months since Maddie was born. Today, however, is 21 weeks and 3 days – the exact number of days pregnant I was when we lost her. It’s so hard to believe that she’s been gone as long as she was with us physically.


She was such an amusing, sweet baby. When we went to her 8-week ultrasound, she was so tiny, but was bouncing all over along the bottom of my uterus, waving and kicking. When we went for her gender scan at 18 weeks, she was so incredibly active that they had to trick her into settling down long enough for them to get the heartbeat for us (she wasn’t shy about showing us that she was a little girl, though!). I just treasure every second I had with her.

I admit it. In the past, I was kind of a shop-a-holic. I had a thing for expensive purses, for example – my husband would usually take me to get one each Christmas for my gift (and, when you get a purse, you have to get a wallet, right?). I was always going to the mall for new clothes, etc. I’ve found that a lot of that has changed since losing Maddie. I just don’t really care about a lot of that stuff anymore. I don’t really need to impress anyone, and that stuff just doesn’t matter at all to me personally now. So much gets put into perspective – what you keep, what falls away.


So, I began staring down the barrel of Christmas. My family is wonderful, but our annual gift exchange has evolved into us all just exchanging gift cards of the same amount every year. I’m so grateful for everything I receive, and love giving – but we’re all adults, we’ll just buy ourselves stuff when we need it. There’s no light in someone’s eyes when they open up a Best Buy gift card. So, I had a proposition. Instead of exchanging gifts, I suggested that we all instead donate an amount of our discretion to a charity of our choice. Then, on Christmas Day, we tell each other to where we donated and why in lieu of the exchange. To my delight, they loved the idea. Now, I’m trying to decide to where I should donate. My first thoughts are the National SHARE Foundation, or to LightACandle. I’m going to be doing a similar exchange with a girlfriend whose baby was six weeks premature this year, and I’m thinking that March of Dimes may be appropriate for our exchange. Does anyone have any other thoughts, or is anyone else doing something of the like? 

Whew. We had our ultrasound today, and all is good. Better than good - fantastic.  I’m 6w4d gestationally, and measuring 6w1d (so right on track). Heartbeat was strong – 120 bpm. Everything went so well that they said that I don’t need to go see my RE tomorrow for the ultrasound there – we just made an 8 week appointment there. It was such an amazing moment to see the heartbeat, after I was so very worried – I cried (as I always do), it was just so beautiful. I won’t breathe until I’m holding that baby in my arms, but seeing the heartbeat brings the rate of miscarriage down under 5%.


My consult with the perinatologist is on December 17 (same day as my next u/s at the RE). I will indeed be doing a Shirodkar cerclage, so I feel really relieved. You know, I was thinking about it – throughout my life, my goal has always been to have as few people as possible see my business end. I want to go to Heaven being able to say that I really had the least number of people possible who could possibly discuss that part of me. After all of the fertility treatments over the past four and a half years, pregnancy, and then the process of losing Maddie – I’ve kind of decided to start a tally from here on out. Obviously the list will be incomplete, but I’m sure it will be distinguished.

In the interest of that – oh, look, here’s my uterus! :)

I often see people misuse the word “ironic” when they are just describing something mildly coincidental. There are definitely things in this life that are ironic. Getting a positive home test on Maddie’s due date was a tiny bit ironic. Hitting your husband with a golf club when he’s a professional golfer is kind of ironic (or at least shows a pretty well-developed sense of the absurd). Misusing the word “ironic” is a little ironic.


I started thinking about this as I look at the next few days. At 21 weeks and 2 days of my pregnancy with Maddie, I went into the hospital in labor. Thursday will be 21 weeks and 2 days since she was born and taken to Heaven, and we’ll have an ultrasound at the RE that afternoon to look to see if we can find the heartbeat for her little twin brother or sister (we also have an appointment tomorrow morning at the OB). This isn’t really ironic, but it is a somewhat strange coincidence.

Cheryllookingforward, who’s a wonderful woman, has posted before big appointments how nervous she was, but how she felt like she was overreacting by worrying so much. Cheryl, you’re not crazy at all. I’m so incredibly nervous for the next couple of days. I worried that my low-grade fever this weekend hurt something, that every cramp I have is something bad, that we’re going to walk in tomorrow and find horrible news. I just figure that I’ll take the next couple of days as they come, and be happy that I have Maddie and this baby today.