Insomnia; or, Flashbacks.

Tomorrow morning I go in for my 12 week appointment. I'll be hearing Baby's heartbeat on a Doppler.

Tonight I can't sleep.

Never mind that we've already seen Baby's strong little heartbeat, severely lessening chances of miscarriage. Never mind that I've been consistently sick for the past seven and a half weeks. Never mind that I haven't had any symptoms of anything other than normally progressing pregnancy. Never mind that my pregnancy symptoms are pretty much textbook pregnancy symptoms so far, something that never happened the other two times.

All I can think about, as I pray over and over again, "Please let them find the heartbeat right off," is that exactly 39 weeks ago, the exact same prayer was going through my mind the night before my last 12 week appointment. I was pretty confident that everything was fine, but I really didn't want to have to deal with the suspense and false panic if they couldn't find it right off.

And then the next morning they couldn't find the heartbeat with the Doppler. No big deal, I thought, plenty of people say they couldn't find the heartbeat right off. They took me downstairs just to check with the ancient sonogram machine. Couldn't find a heartbeat. But no big deal, because really, when I say ancient I mean you could barely even tell there was a uterus in that image. So they sent me to the hospital to check on the fancy new machine. No big deal, because I get to see my baby.

And then they couldn't find a heartbeat there.

And then it was a very big deal.

Both Shallow Man and I have a very good feeling about this pregnancy. We're confident that it's going to work out. But that isn't making the flashbacks go away so I can sleep yet.

Tonight, 39 weeks later, I'm praying the same prayer and just hoping that tomorrow will be a good day, with no further sense of deja vu.

Please, PLEASE, let them find the heartbeat right off this time.

Dear, sweet child . . .

I know I always jokingly say that doing homework makes me sick to my stomach.

But I really need to get this done today.

So please, let's establish some boundaries right now:

Stop taking me so literally!

Or at the very least hold off on the sickness until after my major project is finished.

Thank you.

And now for something best of all; or, "!!!!!"

So I don't have the energy at this point to write a long post.

But if a picture is worth a thousand words, I think a

one . . .



two . . .



or three . . .



thousand word post would definitely be long enough, right?

Short story: Our surprise little miracle Baby Nib or Shallow Jr. is scheduled to arrive in October. We got the sonogram this morning and saw our little one and heard the heartbeat for the first time ever and I have to say it's kind of addicting and completely over-the-top amazing and we couldn't be more thrilled. We are thanking our Heavenly Father daily, hourly, and more for this blessing.


The other good news is that the crippling morning sickness I've been suffering with for the last month or so (I may or may not have lost about 10 pounds in that time) is responding VERY well to the new prescription they gave me (after the last prescription made it about ten times worse). I may even make it back to class for the last few weeks of my last semester!

Now for something more light-hearted.

So I read blogs.

Lots of blogs.

Blogs of friends and family, yeah.

But mostly blogs of people I do not know and will never meet.

And I'm okay with that.

Because many of these people are hilarious.

And sometimes they have posts like this.

And then I just have to share.

(And I also wonder why I never thought of that.)


Hmmm.

Maybe it's time to find some cabbage. . . .

Heavy heart

I don't think I ever truly understood what it felt like to mourn with those that mourned until I had my miscarriages. I always felt deeply for people when they had trials or tragedies and would sympathize with them, talk with them and even, I hope, help make their way a little easier to bear. But it was sympathy and not empathy.

Since I have begun blogging, albeit irregularly, about our infertility struggles and the heartache of the miscarriages, I have come across the amazing network of blogs and communities of women and couples who are struggling, too. I am not a central player in any of this; I tend to lurk and read blogs without commenting most of the time. One of these days when I'm more organized I will get around to putting up a list of some of these blogs that have inspired and helped me.

When I hear about any of these wonderful people getting that positive test, or getting chosen for adoption, I cheer for them. When they find out the flavor of their baby, I start thinking thoughts of pink or blue. When they post pictures of their miracles, I coo and sigh and melt and post comments with wayyy too many exclamation points.

And then there are those other days. Days when someone gets one more negative test. Days when suddenly it's too hard for someone to put on a hopeful face and they need to vent or cry or scream in frustration. Days when the Clomid didn't work, or a new round of shots failed, or the doctors just don't know what to try next.

Or days of loss, like today. Days when I find out that one of these amazing couples has been unchosen for adoption. And then the loss seems as unbearable to me as if it had been my own. I'm weeping as I type this, because my heart aches for this couple (who most likely had no idea I was even reading their blog). I can't lift the burden for them. I can't make it better. All I can do for them is mourn as they mourn.

Please, keep Josh and Savannah in your prayers.

I suppose you're wondering why I've gathered you all together today.

So I think we've figured out the answer to the mystery:

Barb @ getupandplay said...
Weird! Strange coincidence, my baby boy Charlie is one of the babies in that issue. I can't think how it got to your inbox though! What a bizarre thing!

Not so bizarre, Barb. No so bizarre at all.

I remember a few months back, Barb mentioned that baby Charlie (who is pretty freaking adorable if pictures are to be believed) was a finalist in some baby contest and urged us all to go vote for him. Being the supportive friend and sucker for cute baby pictures that I am, I obliged. Apparently it was a good thing I did, too, because this cute boy did win second place in his category. Yes, after seeing Barb's comment, I checked my free issue and found the exact picture for which I had voted published right there for all those with free subscriptions to see (my votes for the other two age categories also ended up winning prizes. Do I have great taste in babies or what? And you're welcome, Barb!).

What sealed the deal: as I remembered voting for these kids, I had a vivid flashback to the voting process. Rather than having little radio buttons you could toggle and submit, all of the photos were numbered. In order to vote you had to submit your three choices . . .

BY EMAIL.

(dun dun DUH!)

So I guess I won a prize, too, just for voting. Kind of like this:



So the moral of the day is: if you vote, mysterious things happen to you, culminating in free magazine subscriptions.

Or you might just get a sticker. Whichever.

In any event, I this it's now safe to say . . .

Case closed.


Thanks, Barb, for providing the clue that cracked this case wide open. Give that cute baby of yours a squeeze for me!

Puzzled.

So I have a mystery on my hands.

Yesterday, at 8:04 p.m., I received in my email inbox the following:

We hope you enjoy your free subscription to the Utah Baby Guide.

That was it.

No preamble, no explanation of why I have received a free subscription to the Utah Baby Guide. No indication of how they got my contact information. Not even really an official announcement of my having received a free subscription. An implied announcement, yes, but not an explicit one. No clue as to where this is coming from. Just a free subscription, just like that, and I was left scratching my head trying to figure out why this email was sent to me.

And I must confess that I'm stymied.

I haven't signed up for any mailing lists or free drawings or anything. The email address it was sent to was my personal address, rather than the junk one I give out when I sign up for free things anyway. I haven't been frequenting any baby sites or anything that would have given me this hookup. Back when the second miscarriage happened in July, I unsubscribed from the baby sites so I wouldn't keep getting the weekly emails because it was just too painful at the time. Come to think of it, even those emails went to a different account than this one. (Yeah, yeah, I have more email accounts than a normal person needs or ought to have. Whatcha gonna do?) And nobody has mentioned to me, "Oh, hey, I signed you up for a free subscription to the Utah Baby Guide." (That a friend signed me up is the most likely scenario since after the graphic the email does say that if I have a friend I'd like to give a subscription to I just need to click this link, yadda yadda, but still, if someone did sign me up they didn't mention anything about it.)

I should probably have made it clear from the get-go that I'm not upset about this, just mightily puzzled.

Where did the mystery subscription come from? Are there more on the way? Was this a completely random spam-like thing, and if so, why did my spam filter let this one through but block all the Viagara and discount Rolex ones?

Ah, life's eternal questions have risen once again.

And in the meantime, I guess I'll just wonder about the mystery and read the story about the triplets with the cute photo where they're all wearing ties and crying their eyes out.



And if any of you have any light to shed on this puzzle, please let me know. I love mystery stories, but my favorite part is always at the end when Poirot or Miss Marple or Nick and Nora call everyone in for a dinner party and reveal the solution, beginning with the speech about "I suppose you're wondering why I've gathered you all together today." Love that part! So yeah . . . let me know.