Settling into Our Traditions

This is the second holiday season since I converted, and the third since we stopped celebrating Christmas in our own household. The first Christmas, before my conversion and when I had just begun my Intro to Judaism classes, was made underwhelming just by circumstance; we had just moved into our house in early December and life was too chaotic to get a Christmas tree and to find our boxes of decorations. We realized it wasn’t so bad and we didn’t miss it so much because we had enough of it in the rest of the world, and that helped us the next year when we skipped celebrating much more intentionally.

Last year was the first year we deliberately did not get a Christmas tree or Christmas gifts for each other, and I had to grapple with the question of how we create our own traditions and what traditions we can share with family, which traditions we want to try to keep consistent from year to year and which will be flexible depending on whose family we can be with. I feel a little more grounded in that this year, but also still open to changes. Basically we are creating our own Hanukkah traditions and letting Christmas be more open since it’s not our holiday, but our families’ which we participate in secondarily. Some years we may go to my in-laws’ for the traditional Christmas morning bagels and gift exchange; other times, like this year, we won’t go over til mid-afternoon when the other siblings are going over there, and we will have dinner together. Some years we will travel south to visit my parents since our child will be out of school for winter break. I’m not worried anymore about “confusing” our child with whatever happens that day in whichever family member’s home; I feel confident in and comfortable with what we have begun setting up, and grateful for all the love and culture-sharing among family that our child will get to be surrounded by.

Nicole’s brother and his wife, who will raise their children Catholic, will continue coming over to our house for the Passover seder every year. That will be in their kids’ memories, and yet their kids won’t be confused about whether they are Jewish or Catholic. They will know they are coming over to celebrate our holiday with us since we are family. Likewise, our child will not wake up to a Christmas tree and piles of presents on Christmas or have anything else happening at home or within our family that makes them think they are Christian, but they will have memories of how they spend Christmas with their extended family. They will certainly look forward to having dinner with relatives and exchanging some gifts with them. And they might even find the sparkly attraction of Christmas more appealing than Hanukkah. I would be naive if I didn't expect that. Despite its crucially important message about preserving our faith and culture against all pressure and threats, Hanukkah is a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, and I don't want for us to blow it further out of proportion than it already is in a misguided effort to compete with Christmas. We have our own major holidays, and our child's sense of how being Jewish is honored and celebrated and observed comes from an entire year of rituals, not just this one holiday that may be culturally overshadowed by Christmas (and not without reason - the birth of a savior is understandably a bigger deal; there is not even anything temple-based in the observance of Hanukkah). 

But at Christmas, we will have just recently finished our holiday of light, telling the story of Hanukkah and remembering the importance of maintaining culture and resisting total assimilation. We will have our newly created tradition of having a Hanukkah dinner on the weekend - how nice that there is always a weekend since it’s an 8-day holiday! We will give our child a gift every night, some much smaller than others, and we will also spend that time as a family around the menorah each night, talking and reading and playing games as the candles burn low. We will make latkes on the weekend. We will donate the tzedakah (charity) we’ve been saving all year. We will go to that week’s Shabbat service and watch the big menorah be lit and sing Hanukkah songs with our community. We will attend the synagogue’s family Hanukkah party. And within days or weeks of that festivity coming to an end, we will continue enjoying the larger culture around us - the prettiness of our neighbors’ Christmas lights, the music and decorations in stores and friends’ homes, the Christmas cards that come pouring in from loved ones. We will enjoy it as many non-Jewish people enjoy driving and walking through Williamsburg Brooklyn in the fall to see the sukkahs set up outside Orthodox homes, or as Westerners enjoy going through Chinatown during the hugely celebrated and brightly decorative Chinese New Year.

We are a pluralistic society, and I love that. As much as I love Israel and look forward to traveling there someday, and as much as I think it must also be nice to have most people around you joining in your celebrations, I wouldn’t want to be separated from other cultures. I have always loved learning about and participating in other cultures, while not appropriating them as my own.

Winter is a dark, dreary time, and it’s beautiful that several cultures have festivals of light and giving and family and celebration for us to look forward to and to keep us going until the days begin lengthening again. 

What's Next? (Is "planning for the unknown" an oxymoron?)

Realizing that I’m not even halfway through pregnancy is strange, because I feel like I’ve been pregnant for AGES, but nearing the halfway mark next week is still a reality check that THERE IS SO MUCH WE NEED TO DO. We still have an English-immersion student living in what will be the nursery (she’s been with us since September) and we haven’t even measured the room for furniture. We do have a plan for where she will go when we need to start setting up the nursery, but it feels strange that our designated room isn’t even really accessible yet for planning or fantasizing.

We are frantically saving up the $2500 needed for second-parent adoption (still necessary for travel to states and countries where our marriage is not recognized), $1200 for our doula who we will be interviewing next weekend, $1600 for wills etc. with our attorney, and approximately $3200 for two months’ worth (4 vials) of donor sperm if we want to guarantee having the same donor available for a possible second child. (What if we end up needing more than that? But we can’t afford it! This is all I can allow myself to budget for in the mad race to save.)

We also have yet to figure out our day care plan. Every time someone asks, “So what will you do for child care? You know you need to be planning that YESTERDAY because day care centers have waiting lists, right?” I panic and have an internal meltdown. The problem is we don’t really even know what we need yet. Will we be able to afford for me to go to work part-time somewhere? And will I even find something local that accommodates me in that way? If so, will the child care provider be able to do just a few hours a day, or will that take away from a possible full-time client they would prefer to have? What would those hours look like? I don’t know if I’m asking a provider to just have our child three full days a week, or four or five mid-afternoons (if I work from 3-7 somewhere), or something else. If I get an afternoon gig in Long Island that I have to drive to, how will my wife pick up the baby from daycare when she gets home at 5:30 with no car? We can’t afford a second car on part-time income! If I need to go back full-time, will I find something close to home, cutting down on my current three hour total commute? Will I be able to work 8-4 somewhere? Will I NOT find something before my maternity leave is up and end up having to go back to work in the Bronx for a few months before taking a whole different work schedule when I do find something? Will the child care provider be able to be flexible and agreeable to all eight thousand possible scenarios we are facing???

I love my job but am also ready and okay with moving on at this point. I’m glad I stayed here when I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else a few years ago (the critical point to leave if I was going to leave and accrue new benefits elsewhere before having a child). It’s comfortable, I have a flexible and supportive environment that has allowed me to go through the crazy and unpredictable schedule of fertility treatments, and I get unusually great benefits for a social service agency. I have five weeks’ vacation, five sick weeks a year plus up to five additional weeks I can save in a sick bank, three personal days, and all the major Jewish holidays off. I have a pension plan and a life insurance policy paid by my employer. I can take five months off with my baby and have my position guaranteed when I return. I have my own office (very rare in this field) and a comfortable environment. I have so many friends here.

But I also have to travel an hour and a half each way every day. I have to pay $242 per month on my railroad pass, in addition to subway fare. I have to be on call every few months, getting phone calls throughout the night for five days. I have to work until 7:00 one night a week every other month. I’m not guaranteed to leave at 5:00 any other day because crises pop up unpredictably in foster care. My heart hurts worse and worse with the emotional burden of this work as I bring my own child into the world. I am realizing that being a supervisor is something I love in many capacities (when I feel empowered to make real changes and impact on my staff and with the cases) but hate in others (I’m weak with staff confrontation, get really anxious and procrastinate on disciplinary action, fall behind other supervisors on ensuring workers’ mandates are being met even though I am ahead of most others in ensuring my own are met).

I want to get back into direct practice, and I want to learn something other than foster care. I’m passionate about it, but I’m passionate about it because this is the job I happened to land right out of school and I went into it with everything I have. I have the ability to be passionate about other areas of social work also, and a big part of the appeal of an MSW to me was how versatile it is, how very many different things you can do with it: gerontology, mental health, schools, hospitals, prisons and juvenile justice, immigration, domestic violence, homelessness, HIV/AIDS, LGBT, children and families, individual and group therapy, policy work, research, advocacy. I have always been attracted to the doors open to me as a social worker, but I felt safe and comfortable and passionate in my first job and have stayed here. I don’t regret that because I have been able to serve my clients better and better with each year of experience I get. I don’t want to spend my life dabbling, I WANT to have a focused passion and area of expertise. But it’s okay for that to change once in a while, and now might be a good opportunity. I also know that I work for the cream of the crop in child welfare, and moving to a more local agency still doing foster care is likely to leave me feeling dissatisfied, frustrated, and overwhelmed in comparison to what I left.

I’m glad I stayed here. I’m glad I got all this experience under my belt in an organization where I felt safe and cared for. My resume is very well-padded with the various positions I’ve held here. I’ve also accrued maximum vacation and sick time from all my years here, so I knew I either needed to leave years ago (when I was NOT ready) or stay until I had a baby. But now I’m in a position of planning for the birth of my child while also having to plan a major career change, and that is more than a little overwhelming. When I first got pregnant, I told myself I could just come back to this job after my maternity leave and then start looking, so that I wouldn’t have the pressure of that while on leave and the anxiety of it while pregnant. But the looming reality is that I do not want to spend even one day leaving the house at 7:00 and getting home at 6:30 earliest. I do not want to spend even one week on-call, handling crises at two in the morning with a cranky baby at my breast. I do not want to return after five months away and feel disconnected and checked out because I’m so antsy to move on. I do not want to catch up on my cases just to leave them a couple months later. I want to go into a fresh start.

And this means I have no choice but to be thinking about it now. I’m trying very hard not to obsess over it, because I can’t interview now so it’s not something I can control at the moment. I have to trust that things will fall into place, and do my part in making that happen when the time comes. But the child care dilemma makes this difficult to do.

My strong preference is to go with someone who watches two or three children from their home, like my mother and my wife’s mother did when we were young. I have two possibilities, recommendations from our neighbor and from my mother-in-law’s secretary, so I need to start with calling them and running over all the possible day care needs we will have, and see how flexible they can be. I have to start there, because maybe one will say, “Part-time, in any arrangement, will be fine and I will charge accordingly. I’m also open to doing full-time if that’s what you need. Just let me know when you know!” Wow, just imagining hearing that takes a weight off my shoulder. I can only hope!

On the Move!

Baby Bug is making such advancements! I’m 19 weeks, and already a lot has progressed since I last wrote at 16 weeks.

My breast sensitivity FINALLY abated for a few weeks, and now has come back in a different form. They feel muscularly sore and achy, in a way that I can feel with very minimal movement.

I was already having difficulty bending over my abdomen a few weeks ago to put on shoes, pick something up off the floor, etc. That’s improved only because I’ve figured out how to bend in a different way that accommodates my growing belly; I squat slowly with my knees going outward, like a plie. (Tying shoes is still difficult, but I sit down and bring my foot up on the opposite thigh to make it easier, instead of bending down to the floor.)

It’s a rare treat to get a good night’s sleep. Not only am I up every hour or two to pee, but my body is apparently aware that I’m not supposed to be sleeping on my back anymore. I can only fall asleep on my back, but I’ve been turning to my side in my sleep and then waking up out of discomfort at some point afterward. My friend gave me her pregnancy body pillow because she didn’t want to have to store it, and after five nights of trying, I haven’t figured out a way of using it that actually keeps me comfortable enough to fall asleep. I can still get away with being on my back for probably another couple weeks, according to what I’ve read, but I don’t know how I’ll adjust after that. It’s already problematic.

At my 16 week check-up, the doctor said to have plenty of calcium because critical bone development would be happening for the next few weeks. The baby will get enough calcium no matter what, but will take it from my own supply which will hurt my own bones if I don’t get what I need. Also, fat is necessary for helping your body absorb the calcium, so I kept whole milk and full-fat yogurt and cheese around. I craved it like crazy, buying chocolate milk at restaurants and carrying string cheese with me wherever I went. Then that craving faded about a week ago and now I have to remind myself to continue having dairy, though I feel like my body is telling me the critical period has passed. It’s so amazing to me how my body knows what it needs and gives me the cues to get it! I craved steak in the first few weeks of pregnancy when I needed lots of iron and protein, then hated meat and craved simple carbs for the second part of my first trimester when I needed energy, and now I craved dairy for a few weeks while baby’s bones were calcifying. The human body is just incredibly designed.

The best change is that I can feel baby move! I’ve been soooo eager for that day, for that regular awareness that there is really a life growing inside me, and it finally happened last Shabbat after a lunch at the Outback (one of our guilty pleasures that we only indulge in maybe once a year) while we were sitting and chatting. My doctor had said movement is typically felt between 18 and 25 weeks, and I was 17 weeks and 6 days at the time. I had been hoping it wouldn’t take me til almost 25 weeks to feel something! Several people have told me they didn’t feel their baby for a while longer just because the mistook the early flutters for gas or hunger pangs, but to me it felt very distinct, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I knew immediately what it was. It felt like a goldfish was trapped in my abdomen and had just run up on the wall of its enclosure. I felt it on the lower right side of my abdomen. I didn’t feel anything the next day, but then felt it again on Monday, and then two or three times on Tuesday. On Wednesday or Thursday, it finally shifted to the lower center of my abdomen and became much more frequent.

Up until Friday, I was texting my wife every time I felt it move so she could be included. I would just text “Bug” each time, and she would know. Friday, it was too frequent for me to keep up with doing that anymore. Our baby also developed hearing about a week ago, and at the last Shabbat service, the baby was moving like crazy throughout all the music. At one point, it was so strong and unexpected that I jumped in my seat and my wife was concerned that something was wrong. Then it stilled as soon as we got outside. On Sunday, we played a Debbie Friedman CD loudly in our living room while we were organizing the contents of our desk, and again the baby was moving so much. I know all babies love music, but I also know that we chose a donor who plays jazz piano, and this was a reminder that I want to watch out for and nurture any musical talent or interest that may be there. There are wonderful artists and musicians in my wife’s family, including her own mother, brother, sister, and grandfather, and it’s just not something either of us have so it could go unnoticed by us. I also know that’s something that should be tapped into early or it could be lost. (If there is no interest or talent, it is okay for it to fade out. I am still glad I had five years of piano lessons even though ultimately it wasn’t something I felt inclined to and I lost interest. Same for ballet, bowling, and other activities I dabbled in as a kid. There is so much value in exploration and learning of any sort!)

Though I’ve only gained six or seven pounds (which is good – since I’m overweight already, I should be on the lower end of the healthy amount to gain), I very much look pregnant, and I’m loving that. I love seeing how my belly looks in maternity shirts, and I LOVE how my breasts look in their new C cup bras. I bought three regular and one sleep bra at Destination Maternity, using a sale and a coupon to get them very reasonably. I got nursing bras without underwire so that I can keep using them until I go back to my old bras (sad day that will be). I fill them out pretty well, yet there is still some room for them to grow more since I know that is to be expected. LOVING THEM.

I am so excited for the 20-week sonogram next week. After getting sonograms at 4 weeks (after a bleeding incident, but sac was a tiny dot that couldn’t be confirmed), 5 weeks (to confirm it was not ectopic), 7 weeks (heartbeat at the clinic), 8 weeks (heartbeat at the OB), and 12 weeks, going 8 weeks without one was torture!! I’ve been counting down to December 30^th with ridiculous levels of excitement. The torment has eased, though, since I started feeling Bug move. Feeling the baby gives me so much of the connection and reassurance that I look to sonograms for.

My Changing Body

I've been feeling little sharp pings and pains on the lower sides of my abdomen for almost a week now. I'm familiar with "round ligament pain," which happens as your pelvis starts to loosen up and shift to make room for baby, and I was expecting it as I entered my second trimester two weeks ago. So at least it wasn't concerning or scary.

I started showing at 12.5 weeks, which is very typical since that's when your uterus first starts to rise above your pelvis. But I swear in the past day or two, at 16 weeks, I popped completely. Two different people at work remarked on it today, and then so did my wife when I came home from work. I looked down and held my shirt against me to frame it better and was shocked to see how big it was. (But I've only gained a pound in the past week or two.) When I lay down a couple hours ago, I noticed that my belly kept its shape instead of flattening out a bit. That was a freaky moment too! Seeing such a dramatic change gave me that "holy crap, I'm really pregnant!" moment all over again.

I am loving my pregnant body. I feel at my most beautiful, and kind of wish I could stay in this state for longer! Everything I am most self conscious about with my body has improved with pregnancy. My barely B breasts are becoming rounder and fuller, growing into what I kept patiently waiting for them to be when I was an adolescent. I stare at them and hold them almost every time I undress, and sometimes even when I'm dressed. I'm just amazed that my body can change like that, and I also know it will be short-lived so I'm reveling in the awe of it all. My already round belly (I've always carried my weight in a way that has sometimes led people to think I'm pregnant) is finally round for a reason, and I can actually wear shirts that flatter this shape, shirts I could not wear when I wanted to DE-emphasize the pregnant look while not pregnant. I can now emphasize it, flatter it, embrace it. I don't have to worry about sucking it in or hiding it. I don't have to worry about how skinny my legs look in comparison to my round belly, because for just these few months, it's SUPPOSED to be like that. And because my stomach has more shape and my breasts are filling out, my broad back/shoulders don't look quite as broad since they're in context with everything else.

My blood pressure is lower (for now), my blood sugar is lower, my hair is thicker, my mood is sensitive and emotional in a way that might be inconvenient at times but feels awfully damn authentic and in the moment. I feel lighter, more graceful, more careful, calmer.

I can't wait to meet baby. I often get 5-year-old-on-Christmas-Eve giddy thinking about it, feeling impatient even as I tell myself to enjoy this time and these last moments of peace and solitude and "just us." But even so, I kind of don't ever want to be not-pregnant again.

Happy 12 Weeks, Bug!

It's actually 13 weeks today, but this is my 12 week post that I intended to write a few days ago after the sonogram. Even though I read that the risk of miscarriage goes down to 2% after a heartbeat is detected, I've heard 12 weeks so much that it still felt like such a relief to make it there.

For my own future memory, I want to quickly document some of the first trimester symptoms. Feel free to skim past it, it's really for my own reference.

• exhaustion combined with insomnia the first few weeks
• fleeting periods of queasiness, some mild and some more severe but never to the point of vomiting (only once did I even feel close to it, waking up sick at 2:00 AM); over by 8.5 weeks, returned more mildly at 10.5 weeks for just a week before disappearing again for good
• smell sensitivity only in the very early weeks, passed quickly
• craving red meat in the first weeks (most likely a need for iron)
• followed by meat aversion and difficulty with the thought of eating most foods except for fruit, dairy, and simple carbs like pizza, bread, crackers, and pasta; still can't eat chicken breast, zucchini, or cooked mushrooms because of early experiences that scarred me!
• cravings in the past few weeks that pass as soon as I stock up on them; root beer (I haven't had soda in over a year!), yogurt (I HATE yogurt typically, but couldn't get enough of full-fat Dannon fruit on the bottom and was having it as a mid-morning snack for almost a week before being grossed out by it again), boxed macaroni and cheese (have yet to indulge that craving but it's been on my mind for a week)
• headaches from my hormone levels going up rapidly; it happened for a few days right before coming off the progesterone supplements, so I was hopeful that that meant my placenta was taking over!
• a couple weeks with yellow discharge around week 10; I don't care if that grosses you out because it's one of those things no one ever talks about so it freaks you out when it happens, but researching it assured me that it was normal! So I'm talking about it! 
• voice huskiness; I would NEVER have thought to associate this with pregnancy and just kept thinking I was getting sick or it was allergies, but it would go away and then return every few days. When I researched the discharge, it came up on a list of "strange symptoms your doctor doesn't think to tell you about," and voice hoarseness/huskiness was on the list. Something about the progesterone loosening everything in your body (it relaxes your intestinal tract so that food moves through more slowly and your body absorbs more nutrients, leading to bloating and sometimes constipation), including vocal cords, mucus membranes, etc. So you can be extra snotty and have a hoarse voice. For someone with year-round allergies that sometimes break through the meds depending on the season and the triggers, I just hadn't thought to associate it with pregnancy.
• WEIRD dreams! I rarely even remember my dreams, and now almost every night I'm waking to some super strange dream.
• Peeing ALL THE TIME.
• Lower blood pressure. Again at the 12 week appointment, it was 120/80. I'm always high, around 138/90. Thank you, baby! I've read that this is usually only for the first two trimesters, but I'll still take the reprieve with gratitude.

Still no bleeding since stopping the progesterone suppositories almost three weeks ago. The day of the last pill was the day of the last bleed. Such a relief! It would have been nice if someone had told me from the beginning that this was a possible side effect so I wouldn't have been so anxious.

The 12 week sonogram was incredible. It was the first one done transabdominally instead of transvaginally, and having them smear the gel over my belly felt like such a pregnancy moment. Like, "yes, I've seen this on TV! I'M the pregnant woman!"

Baby was incredible. The image was cast on a screen in front of me so I could watch it there instead of craning my neck over to the monitor like I usually do. Baby was laying down so comfortably and was MOVING. The radiologist commented that baby was "very active," and I had a momentary feeling of guilt over the coffee I'd had that morning! Baby kept moving away from the position she needed it to be in to measure the neck (indicator of birth defects), and she said "this is a stubborn little baby!" I joked to Nicole later that I did a good job picking out her traits in the donor. :) As she poked and pushed down to try to get the measurement she needed, baby stretched! It had one arm up by its head and stretched it up and arched its head back. This is a first trimester fetus the size of a lime and it was this active little person! I was so in awe and started sobbing as soon as I saw it move. The sobbing made my belly shake - sorry, radiologist, for making this even more difficult! Then again at the heartbeat. I really didn't think the heartbeat was going to move me so much. I mean everyone told me it would, but I've heard it so many times in movies and on TV and it all sounds the same, so I didn't think it was going to be so special. But knowing that's OUR baby, and hearing evidence of the life force in it, was just overwhelming. I was so in awe.

Happy 12 weeks, my sweet little bug. Eight more weeks til I see you again, but I have a beautiful photo to gaze at and get me through til then. I can't wait to feel you!!!

 Our Facebook announcement - so abnormal and yet so perfectly us. Jack was a good sport!

 Our fridge with all sonograms - 5, 7, 8, 10, and 12 weeks

Our baby at 12 weeks!

Faith is Going to the Office Without Wearing a Pad

Alternate title: Inside the Mind of an Otherwise Easygoing Woman Gone Completely Mad

Tuesday marked the last of my progesterone suppositories. I had been so looking forward to that day because I was so over the experience! For eight weeks I had been inserting them twice a day, putting on a pad, and then feeling it as it dissolved back out of me, drying into a chalky substance that would stick to my body and my clothes. Miserable! At least this time it felt like a worthy investment since I was actually pregnant. The four cycles that I was doing them for a week and a half before finding out I wasn’t even pregnant created a little more bitterness.

But what I hadn’t anticipated was the anxiety about whether my body was really making enough progesterone now. I know I was never that low (though I wasn’t given a starting number, just the very high number after starting the medication) so I tried to trust that there was no reason my placenta wouldn’t be taking over progesterone production. Both my fertility doctor and my OB had stated that if my placenta did NOT take over, then it just isn’t a viable pregnancy. So coming off the suppositories was like holding my breath, waiting to see if my body would hold onto my baby without medical support. 

But wait a second – my sister was still not producing enough progesterone at this point and was on shots until 37 weeks. So how can two different doctors both just shrug their shoulders that the pregnancy isn’t meant to be if the placenta isn’t taking over? My beautiful niece Felicity would not be here today if my sister’s doctor had had that reaction. Maybe it’s because my levels were high enough that it would be a true medical anomaly for me not to produce enough to support a pregnancy, whereas my sister struggled with dangerously low levels even on supplements? But why wouldn’t they just check my blood to make sure? How could they not take this more seriously?

The fertility clinic is overly cautious because so much is at stake in trying to achieve pregnancy for their clients, so my “just slightly low” levels may not have been levels that would even concern a regular doctor. Maybe I would have been just fine pregnant on my own. But now that I had been relying on the supplements, they had become like a crutch, and I was so afraid of what would happen when I had to go without them. I toyed with the idea of just finishing the box (another week and a half or so) but then worried about going against doctor’s orders and what might happen if I had too much progesterone in my system.

I have also been worried about the bleeding, because they keep assuming it’s just irritation from the suppositories. That could be hopeful in that it means it would now stop…but it also gave me reason to be nervous if it didn’t stop, because then that would mean it’s from something else.

So I’ve been anxious about if I bleed again, and also anxious about an impending miscarriage now that I was testing out my placenta. After about two or three days, I felt my fear turning into panic. I knew it took less than two days to get my period after coming off the progesterone during the failed cycles. I kept thinking I was feeling slight lower back pain or slight discomfort that could mean impending miscarriage. I don’t cramp during my periods, but I do get lower back pain and like a discomfort or mild awareness in my uterine area. That’s what I kept feeling like I was experiencing, but it was mild enough that I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or if it was a normal part of pregnancy.

I started researching when the placenta takes over, and got nervous when I saw posts by women saying their doctors told them to take the supplements until 12 or 13 weeks. I came so close to taking another one just in case, and wondered if it would be in time to save my pregnancy and if I should then just take one every couple of days to have a little boost of extra progesterone in case my body just needs a little help. Then I called my fertility clinic and left a voicemail with the PA asking what my initial levels of progesterone were, hoping that the number would be high enough that I would be reassured that I really shouldn’t be concerned.

I fretted over those things but didn’t do anything, and soon it was Saturday and I was still pregnant. I realized that if it had been four days and I was still okay, that probably meant everything was fine and my placenta was doing the job. I also hadn’t had any bleeding yet. So Sunday I braved it by going to my friend’s son’s christening without a pad. I had to stop wearing one at SOME point! And isn’t that supposed to be a benefit of being pregnant, that you don’t have to mess with that stuff anymore? I told myself that everything seemed okay, and I couldn’t just live in a state of anxiety, and that wearing a pad 24/7 was proof that I was not trusting my body to take care of my baby.

Just that one act feels like a leap of faith, because if I were to bleed like I did less than a week ago, it could cause quite the embarrassing situation. And maybe that will happen, but I can't tell you how empowered I feel just by dropping the crutch and stepping out on my own. We will be okay.

Be Careful What You Wish For!

I’ve been antsy about not having another sonogram until 12.5 weeks because I had one at 5.5, 7.5, and 8.5. They have been reassuring, and it’s also so nice to see how much growth has happened in such short periods of time. I was a little sad that I wouldn’t get to witness different stages of growth between weeks 8 and 12.

But I didn’t want it this way!

Yesterday around noon I saw a tint of red in my underwear, and when I wiped, dark, bright red bloody tissue was on the toilet paper. It looked like something that should not be coming out of me unless I’m on my period, and I immediately panicked. I ran straight back to my office and called the OB. For some reason I’m much less hesitant to call them for every little thing than I was with the fertility clinic. Maybe because I know they’ll be with me for the long haul so I feel they are responsible for me and this is just going to be part of our journey! The nurse asked if I was cramping or having lower back pain, and I said no. She said then that “it’s probably nothing” but they could schedule me for a sonogram if I was concerned. Yes, please! I told them I work in the Bronx and would need time to get there, so they gave me a 3:15 appointment.

I immediately ran to my supervisor’s office and burst into tears and said, “There’s more blood, and it’s like a clump, I have to go to the doctor right now!” She hugged me and said to let her know how it goes. I’m so, so fortunate in this area. I couldn’t be in a more supportive work environment.

I got there early and they didn’t see me until 4:15. I didn’t mind the wait because I was grateful that they fit me in, but I was just so nervous and wanted to know what was happening! I also kept wondering if there was more blood. Just after 4:00, I finally asked to use the bathroom and checked. There was nothing further. That reassured me quite a bit, because if a miscarriage was impending, I don’t think it would take a break for a few hours. But what do I know? And also it was my last day of the progesterone suppositories, so I feel like the extra hormones could always trick my body into holding on longer than it otherwise would if I wasn’t on supplements.

As soon as I came out, they called me back. A new doctor saw me since mine wasn’t available. I know this can be a downside of choosing a large (4) OB practice, but it had been more important to me to find a practice with great reviews for bedside manner, skills, knowledge, and respect for my wishes. I’m glad I saw her because I loved her also, and it let me know that at least one of the other doctors I now feel comfortable with attending my delivery if mine isn’t available. I would love to meet all of them at some point!

While the doctor was out of the room, I took a peek at the laptop that was sitting out with all my information on the screen. There was a note for my call Friday that said, “Patient called RE some small amount of vaginal spotting when she wipes. She denies back pain or cramping. She was reassured and will call back if the bleeding continues or increases, cramping starts or back pain, or if she has any further questions or concerns.” (I took a picture of the screen so I have the exact words. Does that make me crazy?) This immediately looked like liability coverage to me; it’s noted that I was reassured and that I agreed to call back with any changes or concerns. So I guess now that I DID actually call back to say it was worse, they had to respond by offering a sonogram even though they weren’t concerned about it from my description. The note for today said, “Pt with episode of red staining with ‘clump’. To office for evaluation.” I was amused that they quoted me on “clump”.

The doctor first used a speculum to check my cervix and said everything looks fine, that there was no cervical bleeding. She then did a transvaginal sonogram and checked for uterine bleeding, which was not there, and showed me the heartbeat.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the screen. It was an actual BABY! Gone was my seahorse. The baby was laying on its back, and I could see where the kidney-bean-shaped sac dipped down in the middle to connect to its stomach. The placenta and umbilical cord, I’m guessing. Seeing a head and a body, and something that looks like an eye, just froze me. I was in shock. And then I was flooded by emotions. They just ransacked my body and I started crying as soon as the doctor left the room. And talking to my baby, just holding my abdomen and saying, “THERE you are, you’re really there, I love you so much, stay put and stay safe!”

It’s an odd thing. The sonograms make me feel so connected that I can barely hold myself together for awe of it all. And then within a day, it already ceases to feel real again because I don’t feel or see anything except my growing sore breasts. I want to just stare at it on the screen all day so I know what it’s doing and that it’s okay! Everything is just happening in there without my control, and I’m just waiting for periodic check-ins to make it real again. My baby is more within my control now than it ever will be once it’s born. I don’t have to figure out how to meet its needs; my body’s just doing it. I don’t ever have to be separated from it. I can protect it better than I ever will be able to again. And yet I still struggle with feeling distant and disconnected at times, like it isn’t really happening. I actually MISS my baby – and it’s right here with me all the time!

In my outpouring of relief and love that the sonogram triggered, I said, “I’ll give up anything and everything to keep you safe and have you here with us. Just join us when you’re ready and stay safe til then!” I’ve had my anxieties about the realities of the ways in which our lives will soon change. I’ve thought about how reluctant I am to give up my solitude and freedom, my ability to just watch Netflix if I want all day, or go out on a whim without a half hour of preparation. I think it’s normal to start processing some of that and the losses that will come with this wonderful change. But in that moment, with such relief that my baby was okay, I felt like I wanted my baby here tomorrow, no matter what that meant for changes to my life, just to know it made it and was safely in our family. I’ve never felt such strong, instinctual, and immediate love for something that is still really a stranger and more of an idea than a real person in my life. It was overpowering and still blows me away.

It's hard to make out the details here, but when I zoom in on my phone, I can see eyes, nose, open mouth, and even an arm bent and up by its head!!

10 Week Update

I'm ten weeks today, and it's been quite a ride. I had a few weeks of queasiness, but now not in over a week. Only once, in the middle of the night, did I actually feel really sick, but I still never vomited. I just felt like my stomach was heaving, like I was really seasick, and it wracked me for about an hour until I just fell back asleep. Aside from that one incident, I would just feel bouts of queasiness throughout the day. I kept ginger candies on me for when it got bad, but "bad" was still never really that bad.

The worst thing was really the difficulty eating. I would be so hungry but the idea of most foods would just turn me off. I was always in the mood for pizza from the amazing pizzeria down the street (which I only indulged once over those several weeks) and could always eat carbs, but protein became more difficult to stomach. I would eat barely any dinner and then have a bowl of cereal when I got hungry later. I was so repulsed by leftover pesto chicken that I reheated for lunch one day (I ended up just eating the pasta and then was ravenous and snacking all afternoon because I'd had no protein) that I still can't eat chicken. It was such a curse, being so hungry but feeling sick at the idea of anything that would be good and filling!

All that has passed. Somehow, without my realizing it, it disappeared around or before nine weeks. I've felt so great the past week that I sometimes get nervous about whether everything is okay! I hadn't had any spotting in over a week, and told my wife Thursday night that I felt like one of those factories that have a sign up with like "7 Days Accident Free" where they update it every day. It was just so reassuring that the spotting could be over, and every consecutive day without it felt great. No sooner than I said that, on Friday morning I saw some red blood. Not the "normal" pink or brown, but red. I was at work and went back to my office and broke down in tears.

I had let my guard down. I'd begun to feel blissful again. And physically comfortable at that! I was just in such a happy and secure place. This was like a slap in the face, like a reminder that I was getting too comfortable and should still be anxious.

I ended up calling my OB because I was worried that it would get worse over the weekend and then I would feel bad about calling an on-call doctor after hours so I would be questioning myself about whether it was really a big deal or whether I was overreacting. I figured calling during work hours and just getting an answer would put me at ease, and it did. My nurse said not to be alarmed unless I have to change my pad because of it or unless I get a backache and cramping. So of course then I kept feeling like I was having a backache and then would run to the bathroom to check my pad, but there was nothing. There's been nothing since (it's been two days). And I'm starting to feel more secure again, and yet at the same time, carrying a little bit of dread in the back of my mind.

Two and a half weeks til we get our 12 week sonogram. I'm hoping that gives me a little more reassurance!

Choosing an OB

I have been going to my family doctor for GYN exams, so I didn't have an OB and now had to go about choosing one in order to be discharged there from the fertility clinic. Where to start?? I looked up places nearby before I was ever pregnant and had bookmarked the site of a practice with five female OBs called "Women for Women." I always like the idea of supporting women in "nontraditional" fields, and it has always come into play when choosing a doctor. When it came time to actually choose an OB, though, I looked up reviews for this practice and didn't really like what I saw. There were great reviews for two of the doctors, pretty unsettling reviews for another two, and radio silence on the fifth. Not great odds. But after reading reviews for other practices in the same area (a town extremely dense with hospitals and medical providers, all within ten to fifteen minutes from us), I didn't see anything better. They were all getting two or three stars out of five, with complaints about wait times, bedside manner, and rude and unprofessional receptionists.

I felt so defeated. I figured I'd better stick with my original choice and just hope that mostly unhappy people write reviews. I called them at 9:20 AM and was sent to a voicemail stating to call back between the business hours of 9 and 5. I called again at 9:40, same thing. I was immediately done. It was not a great first impression that no one was picking up the phone 40 minutes into the workday and I was having trouble just making a first appointment!

I started to look up OB/GYN practices near my town and found one in an affluent town about 18-20 minutes away that had wonderful reviews. People raved about both the doctors and the reception staff. I called and was immediately attended to by a friendly receptionist who helped me make an appointment that fit with my work schedule (availability at 6:30PM?? Yes, please!) and let me know where to go on their website to get anything I needed to prepare for the appointment. I had a good feeling right away! But because I was choosing my appointment based on who could work with my schedule and not based on a doctor I had any knowledge of, I was a little nervous about being randomly assigned to one.

Today put my fears at rest. The doctor had an emergency earlier in the day and was backed up, so I didn't see him til 7:30, but he still took his time with me and was very warm and professional. The woman who took me back to the room said to stay dressed because Dr. K had never met me before and would want to first before the exam. He came and introduced himself and asked me some basic questions. One of them was about spotting and bleeding, so I told him I'd had some bleeding right before my sonogram last week, and then the following night. He said, "You're on progesterone, right? How much longer did they say you need to take it?" And that was all he said. His lack of concern was very comforting. The nurse at the clinic had told me progesterone suppositories can be very hard on the cervix, so it made sense that that was his next question.

He then left so I could undress and came back and did a full gynecological exam. He was so quick and thorough, not quite as gentle and explanatory as I'm used to my female doctors being, but so damn efficient that I wasn't even self-conscious and just completely trusted him. He poked all around my abdomen and said, "Oh yeah, it's definitely there." What?? What did you feel? Can you tell my uterus has doubled in size, because I can't! I came home and poked myself all over hoping to feel what he felt but couldn't.

Then he smiled and said we were doing a sonogram. We weren't sure if they would so I was SO excited! Dr. K turned to my wife and asked if she had seen the last two sonograms. She said, "Yes, and they were so different in just two weeks!" Dr. K said, "Wait til you see what's changed in just one week." And there our baby was on the monitor, with actual SHAPE to it! Not the blob of last week, but an upright figure with a little head and a protruding chest with that sweet thumping heart. He said, "It's a little human now, right? That heartbeat is nice and strong." Oh I was soaring. I couldn't believe I could see a head and know what position my baby was in. It looked like a seahorse, just hanging out upright with a head and big chest and no limbs! Incredible.

It felt so surreal, like I froze and felt like, "This isn't really happening. I'm PREGNANT? How is there this little person in there, with a shape and a beating heart, and I barely feel affected by it and life feels normal?" It feels so disconnected to the idea that I'm going to be a MOTHER next year. God willing, there will be an actual baby crying in my arms and I will be somebody's mom so soon. I will be completely responsible for and enslaved by this sweet, helpless creature. And it's just in there growing and preparing to change my life forever, while I walk around and go to work and kick my feet up like nothing's happening, with just occasional mild queasiness and super sore, firm breasts to clue me in at all. Insane. Surreal.

He took us to his office afterward to talk (and had a mezuzah in the doorway!! I'm a happy girl!) and gave us photos that did not show the shape nearly as clearly as the actual live sonogram did, and we were told what to expect over the course of my pregnancy and what appointments I will have. I won't get nearly as many sonograms as I've been getting, and I'm going to miss that! Then I was given a flu shot and a bag full of goodies: eleven different prenatal vitamin samples and a ton of pregnancy and parenting magazines.

Oh also? My blood pressure is NORMAL for the first time in years! I've read that it can drop a little early in the pregnancy because blood is being diverted to so many new places, so I'm not assuming that it's just magically fixed. But any time with blood pressure of 120/78 instead of 138/86 is time I appreciate having.

My little seahorse! It's in profile facing left. The head is very small and then you can see the big chest. Whatcha doin' in there, little bug??

Heartbeat!

I've been so lucky during this pregnancy so far. I had one bout of rough sickness a week and a half ago, waking up at 2AM to seasick-like nausea that went on until I finally fell back asleep an hour later, and otherwise have just had passing periods of queasiness or sometimes just a "bleh" feeling. There are certain foods that I know I definitely do NOT want because I will feel a little sick thinking about it (tonight we had ground beef thawed to cook and I just couldn't), but that changes day to day. My breasts continue to be extremely sore and tender, and they developed a heaviness seemingly overnight about a week and a half ago. I'm a little more sensitive and emotional; things affect me that always would have, but my emotions are closer to the surface, harder to control, and take longer to recover from. I feel more tired than usual, but only had a few days where I just felt so exhausted I could barely do much. I feel like all of this is supposed to be much worse than it is!

Today was our appointment for the clinic to detect a heartbeat and discharge me to my OB as a "live pregnancy." It was huge for us because the chances of miscarriage go down to 2% after the heartbeat is detected, so I figured it would bring us some relief. My BabyCenter app told me at six and a half weeks (I'm seven and a half now) that the heart was now beating, and it just freaked me out! Because pregnancy is tracked from the first day of your last period, this means the heart is beating only FOUR and a half weeks after conception. How in that time does it go from ONE cell to something with a beating heart?? I'm just so amazed.

I went to empty my bladder before the sonogram as instructed, and saw bright red blood on my pad (which I have to wear because of the mess created by my progesterone suppositories). My heart just sank. I've had minor spotting, very faint pink or brown a couple of times a week, but nothing bright red since the last incident. I hated to tell my anxious wife but I had to. I told her I was just glad it happened immediately prior to the visit so that we could ask the doctor about it, instead of calling frantically later that night. The doctor didn't say much because, unlike the nurses, she won't just say something to provide comfort. She's very factual. So she just said, "well let's look," and commenced the sonogram. Immediately the gestational sac was visible, with two blobs inside, and she said that everything looked good. She explained that the upper blob was the yolk which would become the placenta, and that the bottom was our baby. Then she pointed to the rapid thumping right in the center and said, "there it is, the heart." I immediately started crying. She moved past it so quickly to check everything else out, and I wanted to ask her to find the heartbeat again and let us just watch for a while! Or record it with our phone to watch repeatedly later! But my inhibitions held me back and I just let myself feel happy that we had seen it and that we knew everything was okay.

The doctor said that bleeding is not uncommon in early pregnancy, and that since everything looks good, I shouldn't be alarmed unless it steadily increases, there are clots, or it's accompanied by cramping. And then she said, "If that's the case and you're miscarrying, there's nothing that could be done, but you should call your doctor just so they can help figure out what's going on." I appreciate her honesty! She told me that they will not officially discharge me until my OB appointment next week so that I still have someone to call or even see if anything happens between now and then.

She gave us a picture of our little bug and then the front desk staff congratulated me with big smiles as they collected my files for me to give to my OB.

Once in a while I have a moment of panic that something I can't even see is invading me and just growing and doing its own thing. It's so wild!!

Saturday Bliss

My childhood weekends were amazing. Many Friday nights, we would go with Dad to Blockbuster and pick out dumb kiddie movies for the weekend while he chose something for him and Mom or a family movie for all of us. We would have the weekend to watch and re-watch our selection.

In nice weather (and most of the memories I've held onto are from nice-weather days), I would wake up lazily on a Saturday to hear a lawn mower somewhere in the neighborhood, maybe feel a cool breeze. (Am I making that memory up? Were our windows ever open at night?) We would watch Saturday morning cartoons or Nickelodeon while Dad made pancakes or French toast or waffles. This was the only day we had a breakfast like this, so it was really special. Sometimes I would help him beat an egg in a little glass Garfield mug we had gotten during a promotion at McDonald's.

Weekends also meant yardwork or home improvement for Dad, and often this required a trip to Lowe's or Wal-Mart. He would practically beg one or more of us to accompany him. Poor Dad just wanted to spend some weekend time with his kids, and we often had to be dragged! Lowe's utterly bored me; I was more interested in the Wal-Mart trips because I could bring my saved up allowance and very carefully select a new Barbie.

My brother and sister and I would sometimes play Nintendo and other times play outside, riding our bikes or playing in the fields and the woods, occasionally with neighbor kids. Sometimes there would be a neighborhood yard sale, and we would walk up and down every street to eye the goods, often spending our allowance on other people's old crap, like a toddler stroller that we would use for our dolls. One woman made homemade lollipops to sell, and that was always a treat!

Sometimes there were baseball games, dance recitals, bowling league. There was usually church on Sundays, often followed by fast food as a special treat. But when I think about my childhood weekends, the feeling I come away with is relaxation. We had our whole family together, we had open stretches of time to just play and be together, we had total separation from the rest of the week.

Being pregnant makes me think about the kind of family life I want to create for my child. There is so much pressure up here for kids to be involved in ALL THE ACTIVITIES. And my wife has a large local extended family, which I'm so grateful to have because that's something I never had as a kid, but it also means every other weekend seems to be booked with baptisms, first communions, birthdays, bridal showers, weddings, baby showers. I'm excited for my child to be involved with family, and I look forward to spending our two precious full days together as a family doing fun things and going on outings together, but I hope I also remember the simple value of just being around each other, finding ways to entertain ourselves in our cozy nest and really stepping out of the weekday rush to refocus as a family unit, to just live, and interact, and be.

There You Are!

Today we saw the first picture of what will be our baby - meaning, we couldn't see the little bug itself, but saw the sac that it's being created in. It was like a little dark pea right in the middle. She pointed out the "yolk" and the "donut" and said the lining looked beautiful, my numbers are beautiful, and the growth looks great. I teared up and started to feel my first real attachment to THIS baby, not just the idea of a baby-to-come. It was an amazing moment, looking at it together, knowing it was in there safe and sound. Getting all these early sonograms is an up side to our involvement with a fertility clinic!

Two weeks til the heartbeat. The six days between our scare and today felt sooo long, but I have a feeling this next two weeks is going to be even worse! My best friend gave me a book called Fearless Pregnancy that has a doctor and a midwife break down the irrationality behind a lot of warnings well-meaning people and books will give you. One of the things discussed is the three-month-wait and how actually it should be like a seven-week-wait because once you hear the heartbeat, you have less than a 2% chance of miscarrying. That is very reassuring, but also makes me super eager to get to that point! This feels like such a fragile two weeks.

"The Pregnancy Journal"

My dear friend and coworker, who has been such a support throughout this journey, sent me "The Pregnancy Journal" by A. Christine Harris. It looks like a spiral-bound notebook and tells me what is happening on each day of the pregnancy, and then gives me places to make comments, notate my weight and waist size, check off symptoms, etc. It's fascinating to read every day what is happening inside my body - and also to be able to log a little bit about what's going on. So perfect for me!

Before going into the day-by-day descriptions, there are questions to answer to help you process everything. I enjoyed answering them, and want to share them here.

Was your pregnancy planned or a surprise?
Planned to the utmost!

When did you begin to think about having this baby?
For so many years! But real planning began in July 2013.

When did you first suspect you were pregnant?
The day before our blood test because my breasts were slightly swollen - but didn't believe it!

When your pregnancy was confirmed, how did you react?
I shrieked and ran to Nicole, then soon started trembling and crying. I was in such happy shock!

How long did it take to become pregnant? Did it seem quick or slow?
Slowww! It took six months, five very expensive cycles, and two donors.

What is the best thing about being pregnant?
Knowing my body is capable of partnering with God to create life, being treated so special, imagining what our family will be like, feeling the changes in me.

What challenges do you foresee with this pregnancy?
Medical complications due to my high blood pressure and slightly high blood sugar. Adoption process for Nicole. Hearing ignorant, offensive, or otherwise hurtful remarks and questions.

Who were the first to know you were pregnant and what were their reactions?
Our parents and siblings, our clergy, and our close friends who have supported us all along the way. They were surprised and ecstatic!

What was the first thing you bought specifically for this baby?
Nicole bought a "Lil Mets Fan on Board" car sticker a few years ago!

What hopes and dreams do you have for your baby?
I want our baby to be happy, healthy, and whole. I want our child to learn from their mistakes and not be defeated by them. I want our child to be kind and compassionate and be committed to making the world a better place in whatever way they are called to do so. I want him/her to always feel LOVED.

What are the most important qualities you can nurture as a parent?
Finding balance between firmness and flexibility, being unconditionally affectionate, letting your child learn through their own exploration and experience, providing consistency and guidance.

What were the best things about your parents as parents?
Their love for each other, their high expectations of us, their playfulness and affection, their focus on family as first priority.

What role do you see your family playing in your baby's life?
Support, extra hands when we need help, traditions, giving our child a sense of deep belonging and being surrounded by love and adoration.

Have you picked any names? What names would you consider?
I don't want to say yet because we have only just scratched the surface of that discussion!

Are there names to which you would say, "Absolutely not!"?
Probably a ton.

Do you want to know as soon as you can if it's a girl or a boy? Why or why not?
No - finding that out at birth is one of the few special surprises left in life - and it doesn't matter!

What one thing do you want your baby to be sure to have that you didn't?
Stability - one neighborhood, one school, one synagogue, friends for life.

Whose facial and physical characteristics do you want your baby to inherit?
Nicole, to keep people from just assuming I was the one pregnant.

Whose emotional and personality characteristics do you want your baby to inherit?
The best of both! Loyalty, compassion, reason and passion balanced, playfulness, commitment.

What tasks do you need to accomplish before the baby is born?
Pay off the credit card we used for this cycle. Secure daycare. Enjoy our final months as a family of two - go to a show, spend time in the city, take a trip that we wouldn't do with a child. Read and learn a lot! Start adoption process with a lawyer. Create wills.

Early Symptoms

I will be five weeks on Monday, and I read on my WebMD pregnancy app (which has really cool images and facts about each week - the science of pregnancy, not the fluff, though I have an app for that too) that this week is the most important as far as influencing the creation of the gestational sac and how it will support and nurture my baby. So I'm taking a week-long vacation from Flonase. My doctor said it would only be an issue if you were injecting it into your uterus, but that it stays in your nasal passages and it's better for my baby that I'm breathing well and getting enough oxygen. He said his own wife used Flonase throughout all her pregnancies. I tried anyway about a month ago to see if I could go without it, to see if Zyrtec by itself would be sufficient to manage my allergies, and I made it about four or five days before I became miserable with sneezing and congestion. I know the benefits should outweigh the risks when considering any medication in pregnancy, and clearly that is the case here, but I want to try to make it through week five without it. Just that one crucial week, and then I'll return to my regular medication regimen.

In the meantime, my symptoms are few but severe, which is comforting. I welcome anything that reminds me I'm pregnant and lets me know that things are probably going the way they should be. My breasts have been tender and my nipples sore since Monday, and it's only gotten worse by the day. I know that as my body adjusts to the rising hormone levels, that will decrease, but until then it's reassuring. Nicole asks me every couple of hours, "They still hurt, right? Good." We are both comforted by these signs. They're also quite a bit bigger, which I'm thoroughly enjoying since I've never made it past a B cup (and that's only because I'm wide enough that they don't have A cups in my size, or else I could probably fit into that) so it's nice to look down and see them filling out.

I've had a few smell sensitivities. My first was before the positive test, and actually the day that I had broken down crying because I was convinced I wasn't pregnant. My coworker came into my office with her lunch, and I said, "ughhh, what is that smell??" She was a bit insulted and said, "it's just beef! Hibachi beef." I apologized for my reaction but wanted to gag as the odor filled my office. Then the Tuesday after finding out, someone brought ribs into our team meeting and the smell grossed me out.

Yesterday's incident was the craziest, though. I was taking a shower and suddenly smelled old, wet towels. I guess that's mildew. I looked around to see if there were old towels around, and there weren't. It was so overpowering that I couldn't just finish showering. I was on a mission: must find and eradicate the source of this odor! It wasn't until I was sniffing every surface of the shower that I realized this wasn't normal, and also that it's not something that would have built up overnight, so why wouldn't I have noticed it yesterday if it was so strong today? I finally identified the source of it, where the sliding glass doors overlap, and I scrubbed those areas down until they smelled beautiful and I could focus on my shower again.

I didn't intend for my blog to be a "pregnancy journal," but it's going to serve that purpose as well since I want to remember this experience.

Our Big Scare

What a roller coaster this week has been!! We took the pregnancy test Friday night and called our families while shaking and crying. Saturday we went to the doctor for bloodwork so they could make it official, and on our way back, we stopped by the temple to catch our rabbi before Torah study so we could shriek with her excitedly and hug her. We knew her time was short so we kept it brief, and then I followed up with an email giving her a lot more details and saying this is what we wanted to gush about with her if we'd had thirty minutes or so instead of two. Then we told select friends who have been super supportive and deserve not to have to wait three months to share in our joy when we've been dragging them into our frustrations and anxieties for the last six.

We had a few days of bliss like this. Six days, to be exact. Then last night, I went to the bathroom and a dark red blob just fell out of me and into the toilet. I felt it go and my heart sank when I looked down because there wasn't blood anywhere else (as I assume there would be for typical spotting), just this blob that just had to be the gestational sac because what else could it be?? Nicole and I ran a gamut of emotions together. We saw the disappointment of all the things we had dreamed of - the clothes my mother had already purchased excitedly for her future grandchild, how perfect the birth date/month was for my maternity leave, how pregnant I would be for certain events and holidays. Then we felt the weight of the $3000 we still owe for the $4000 procedure and how we would pay that off AND save up again in a reasonable amount of time. And then we felt the emotional loss of losing this potential, this budding life that we were trying so hard to nurture into someone who would join our family.

I tried to accept it at first, saying, "There's nothing we can do about it, it is what it is," and "At least I know I'm capable of getting pregnant now." Within twenty minutes, the shock had subsided and I just felt so devastated. I began shaking and crying, for the exact opposite reasons that I had been just six days earlier.

I called the on-call service and a nurse immediately answered. She was one from my office so she knew me right away and was so sweet and reassuring. She told me there are a million things it could be and I shouldn't panic yet. She told me to come in at 7:30 for a sonogram and bloodwork but that I should relax and not worry all night. You can guess how well I was able to follow that advice. I spent at least an hour Googling "four-week miscarriages" to try to find descriptions from people of what it looks and feels like. Most described it as a white sac with blood vessels running through it, and lots of blood overall. Not what I witnessed, but it didn't comfort me.

At the sonogram, my doctor said she couldn't see the gestational sac because it's too soon. (I'm scheduled for my 5-week sonogram next week.) She saw one tiny dot that COULD be that, because it stayed still while the rest of the tiny dots moved as the wand moved, but she couldn't at all be sure. She did say that everything else looked good - lining still thick, no bleeding in the lining, no fluid on the uterus, nothing to make her think that something had gone wrong.

I waited anxiously at work all day before getting the call after 1:00 that my hcg levels were normal. In the meantime, I had poured my heart out to a couple of my friends at work, and one of them, a mother of two, shared that she had had four miscarriages. She said even very early miscarriages are like the worst period of your life, and that there's no way I had miscarried if I didn't feel severe cramping and have lots of bleeding. She said, "It doesn't just 'ploop' out of you that smoothly. You wouldn't be at work today if you had miscarried, believe me." This was very reassuring.

So I'm 90% reassured. I read a lot into every back cramp, thinking it feels worse and this must be it, here it comes, I'm about to miscarry. But I do believe it's in there right now. I think. I hope. I won't feel fully okay until I see it on sonogram next Wednesday. But I think I'll be okay til then.

We have gone from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair to cautious optimism in less than a week's time. This little bug is giving us a run for our money!

The Secret Cycle

We kept this cycle private, so I'm writing about it as I go and will publish it all at once afterward, for better or worse.

Sunday August 10
At a cousin's wedding reception, I said something to my wife about having told most people that we aren't trying again until about December, while I secretly hope that we can try maybe in October but be able to keep it secret. My ever-practical, super money-conscious wife said, "Let's just do it. Put it on your credit card and we'll figure it out." I said, "Can we really?? If you're not 100% serious, tell me now, because I'm going to get this ball rolling!" We decided not to tell anyone so there's no pressure. What we saw as support the first four times now feels a little more stressful as we begin a fifth cycle. Fifth. It typically happens within three if it's going to happen, and doctors are talking IVF at this point. We're stressed and broke. And I just don't think we can emotionally handle constantly updating people and having them check in. Not this time. Not when we know it's our final attempt at insemination. I checked my period tracker app and noted that my period was due the next day, starting my next cycle just in time.

Monday August 11
Got my period - here we go! I knew that once I got the green light from my wife, I needed to take charge of it, only telling her details when she asks, so that she can lay back and trust me and not second guess herself. It's mutually understood that I have to keep her out of it until she's ready. So I did all the paperwork needed to order sperm from a new bank. My clinic and the bank communicated with me and with one another in record time, and by that afternoon, it was confirmed that the "specimen" would arrive at the clinic by Thursday.

Thursday August 14
FedEx notified me that the delivery was successful. OUR SPERM IS WAITING FOR US! I can't explain my attachment to this donor. It's odd and not something I've felt before. But I desperately want it to be him. I feel connected already and want him to share in the creation of our baby. I didn't feel anything like this with the last donor, and even though I tend not to be superstitious, I can't help but hope that's a sign and that maybe the first four didn't work because that person was not meant to be our donor.

Friday August 15
I slipped and told my best friend. I trust her implicitly and had a breakdown while visiting her and her baby today. She was so concerned and comforting that I felt like I had to tell her so that she knew there was hope on the horizon. I couldn't make her endure seeing me collapse and also have her feel pity that I can't try again for four months when I knew we were doing one more try now. I told her that I didn't want to talk about it or for her to ask about it, and so I wouldn't be telling her dates of when anything is happening, but that I just wanted her to know we're giving it one more go.

Wednesday August 20
I have one follicle at 12mm and my lining is not quite ready. It's only Day 10 so no one is very surprised by this, and I'm told to come back Friday. I told my wife that I'm positive that I'll be going in Saturday and Sunday, based on how it's tended to go for me in the past. This is amazing for two reasons. First, I'm not forced into disclosing to my supervisor when I have to suddenly take two days off of work, and I really didn't want to have to tell her we were trying again when our own families didn't know. Second, we had made peace with the fact that Nicole couldn't accompany me to the insemination appointments because it's in eastern Long Island and she just started a new job in Manhattan a month ago. It's too soon for her to have the luxury of coming in a few hours late two days in a row. What are the odds that this time it would happen on a weekend, BOTH days, so that she can be with me and we can really keep it secret?

Friday August 22
My PA was out, so a nurse I've never met was covering and did my sonogram. She was surprised that my 12mm follicle had grown to 18mm in just two days, and that my lining had thickened so nicely so quickly. I was not surprised. I've gotten to know my body's patterns, what cycles look like for me, much more intimately than I ever would have imagined. There was a second follicle at 12mm. (Only two this time, not the four I got last time - but that's kind of a comfort, because if my issue was really just incompatible sperm, I could easily end up with quadruplets once that's changed up!)

I told Nicole that I really thought I was right about it happening on the weekend, that my 18mm would probably be ready to pop Saturday, and after taking the trigger shot Friday, my 12mm would probably be ready Sunday. She said she was betting on Sunday and Monday. I started to doubt myself and fretted about what I have going on at work Monday morning. Then I got the call to take the shot at 8:30 or 9:00PM, go in at 9:30 Saturday for insemination, and then go back for a second Sunday at 8:30. PERFECTION. So I took my syringe with me to Shabbat services and slipped out between the service and the oneg (dessert reception) to hide in the coat check area and give myself the shot before rejoining my community.

I'm hopeful all over again. I've been anxious, depressed, and emotional over this for so long. But now that I'm really scheduled to go out there, and I have a different vision and connection with a new donor, I'm feeling so excited and hopeful. On an intellectual level, I'm nervous about my optimism because I know the crash could be really bad. But my feelings just are what they are. I can't seem to prevent myself from being utterly devastated. It helps already, though, not to be talking about it. Knowing I can give people constant updates feeds an obsession that just isn't good for me at this point in the game. I need to be able to focus elsewhere whenever possible, and that's easier to do when it's not an available topic of conversation.

Saturday August 23
Apparently my PA was out yesterday because she's working this weekend!! She was covering at the Melville clinic. She came into the room so cheerful and hugged me, saying, "I can't believe I get to do not just one, but BOTH of your inseminations this time! Maybe it will be a good luck charm!" She is the one who has been dealing with me since the beginning (except for the few times Dr. K made an appearance for the cyst and "the talk" after three failed cycles), who has seen my gamut of emotions, who has been like a psuedo-therapist while I'm crying during bloodwork after getting a negative home test. And she was so genuinely happy to be out in Melville today and able to do my IUIs herself. And I felt like she was more invested in it because she isn't just the random Melville nurse who happens to get me, but someone who has been with me all along the journey and knows how much is at stake with this attempt.

She was kind and attentive to a greater degree than the nurses who have done my IUIs up to now. And they were sweet and put me greatly at ease, too! But she just took it to another level of sensitivity, maybe because she actually knows me. She explained everything she was doing and why, and immediately afterward, she pulled the little leaf out that I could rest my feet on and pulled the sheet down to preserve my modesty while I put my feet up. Such a small detail, but something no one else has done; I'm usually awkwardly scrambling after they put the stirrups away because my feet are just kind of flailing and I'm trying to scoot back so I can put them up and lay flat.

My big follicle was nice and mature, but she said the second wasn't growing and didn't look viable. That's fine with me since they didn't miss the big one like they did last time! I was surprised that my body responded so much to this very low dose of Clomid last time (4 eggs) and this time, not so much. But I was okay with that because if the sperm was really the only issue and I'll get pregnant easily with this new donor, I don't want to end up with multiples! One good egg is perfect if this is the sperm that gets it done.

And speaking of which...there were 20 MILLION! We are using California Cryobank, which is more expensive but has already given us a more professional and impressive experience, and the PA said she really feels like their samples are better and they screen their donors more selectively so she always recommends them. I told her we had used Manhattan Cryo because our friend had used them and got pregnant the first time, so we had just assumed it must be good! But I had most vials with only about 8 million in them, one with 10, and one with 15. The 15 was such an anomaly - and here we got 20 the first time! It could also be an anomaly, and maybe tomorrow there will only be 9. But right now I'm pretty damn happy.

Sunday August 24
24 MILLION!!!! That is all.

Sunday September 7
It's hard for me to take time to blog on work nights, and my sister, brother-in-law, and baby niece have been visiting over the weekend, so I haven't been great about updating live. But let me recap the torturous two-week wait.

The first week I felt hopeful. How could I not with these circumstances? But I was anxious about why I wasn't feeling anything. Yes, most of what I usually feel is due to the progesterone supplements, but it seemed wrong and I became more nervous the more time that passed. By Tuesday of the second week, I had a ball of dread in my stomach that this just hadn't worked. I cried once and then tried to let it go and plan ahead. I also kept hoping that I was wrong.

Then that Thursday, two days before my period was due and I would be taking the official test, I felt the telltale cramping in my lower back and I just broke. I had a huge cry and I texted Nicole from work to tell her that we should prepare for the worst, and we started talking about what to do next. I told her I'm just so not ready for IVF, that it scares me and is a last resort, but I'm also afraid of continuing to flush money if I just can't get pregnant this way. I also told her that I no longer wanted to move on so quickly to our known donor option. While that will be so much more cost-effective and could solve the problem by using fresh sperm, I feel so deeply and strongly that our child is meant to be connected to this donor. I never felt that with the previous donor. So she said immediately, then let's give him another chance.

Friday my cramping eased a bit, and I dared to hope. Had it just been implantation? Maybe? But I quickly squashed that, scolding myself for getting my hopes up even for a minute.

Friday night, on our way home from temple, Nicole asked me if I was wearing a new bra because my breasts looked a little bigger. I said no, and that I'd actually noticed that in the shower that morning. She said, "Do you think that means anything?" I said, "I mean I guess it could, but it's happened once before. It's probably just a side effect of the progesterone." She said, "You have an extra test at home still, right? Take one tonight just to see." I was excited that she had agreed to taking a home test before going in the next day for bloodwork, but a part of me was also nervous to have my last tiny flame of hope doused. I kind of wanted to have one more night to hold onto that before devastation set in.

I took the test downstairs while Nicole went upstairs to get ready for bed. I left it on the sink while I tidied up the kitchen for my sister's visit the next day. A few minutes later, with a rock in my stomach, I went into the bathroom, bracing myself and telling myself to keep it together, that it shouldn't be a surprise.

And there were the two lines. The second line was just as strong as the test line except for the very end of it that trailed off. My heart started racing and I ran up the stairs yelling, "Nicole! Nicole!" I burst into the bedroom and said, "I'm pregnant! It worked! It's positive!" She just grinned from ear-to-ear and said, "Are you serious? Let me see!" We hugged and squealed and then I immediately called my parents, still shaking and crying.

And this is when I realized the REAL benefit of having kept the cycle secret - being able to completely surprise the people we love and get a raw reaction from them, rather than having them be aware and waiting to hear. What a gift!

Why I Chose the Reform Movement

Orthodoxy builds "a fence around the Torah," which means making rules extra strict, stricter than actually mandated by the Torah, to make sure you cannot come even close to breaking a commandment. Contrary to (non-Jewish) popular belief, Orthodoxy is not just based in the Torah, since a ton of questions are raised and go unanswered if you were to just read the text. It's based on how a bunch of rabbis and sages decided was the best way to enforce and live out the Torah. They debated endlessly and came up with intricate rules to give people very specific answers on how to live out some of the quite vague laws set forth in the Torah. And this is amended all the time - for instance, not turning lights on and off on Shabbat was clearly not a relevant rule three hundred years ago. So when electricity was invented, they again had to put their heads together and figure out how to interpret ancient texts to apply to this. (I do wonder, when you use a loophole like asking a non-Jew to turn the lights on for you, is the point being missed?)

I'm not dismissing the strict Orthodox guidelines because they come from rabbinical consensus rather than the Torah. I love Talmud study even more than Torah study; I get so energized by watching the debates come alive through the text, and the brilliance in the sages' thinking astounds me. But people look at things differently, and I don't think that taking everything so literally and worrying about the exact right way to do things is necessarily the best way to interpret and live Jewish tradition.

For example, in regards to the following verse from Deuteronomy 6: 5-9 which we read at every Shabbat service and which is inscribed on the scrolls within our mezuzahs:

You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions, which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Orthodox Jews take every piece of this literally and have come to a consensus on how to live it out. They say the Shema prayer when they wake up and when they go to bed. Orthodox men and some women wear tefillin during their morning prayers, which are small black leather boxes that actually contain verses of Torah and are wrapped around their upper arm and hand ("bind them as a sign on your hand") as well as on their forehead ("and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead"). Mezuzahs fulfill the last part of this about inscribing on the doorposts of your house.

Much of the Torah is like poetry to me, and the symbolism and messages behind the stories I find much more powerful and relevant than the literal details. Likewise, I find much more meaning in a symbolic interpretation of the V'ahavta above. The line about binding God's instructions as a sign on your hand to me means letting it show in your actions. Talking about our hands, like the expression "having blood on my hands," classically symbolizes what we are responsible for doing and not doing. How can we live and act in a way that pleases God and makes our lives valuable? How can we hold ourselves accountable for where we fall short and work to better ourselves? Meditating on that to me is infinitely more powerful than literally binding God's instructions to my hand. 

As for the line about being a symbol on our forehead, again, I think it's much more powerful to consider this symbolically in how we keep God's instructions on our mind. Do we think about them? Do we consider how this should play out in our lives? Do we stop to think about our beliefs before we make choices to ensure they are in line? Have God's words reached our hearts, or do we read them rotely and then go back to thinking about our next distraction? So much to meditate on, and I find that assists in my spiritual growth muh more than having actual boxes containing the instructions on my forehead.

But I do have mezuzahs. For me they are really such a concrete reminder of my Jewishness and of God's presence. I confess that I hardly notice them inside my house. They so quickly became part of the decor, and I don't tend to catch such small details in my periphery as I'm going from room to room. But in the few seconds it takes me to lock or unlock the door to the house, forcing me to pause, I always note the one outside and usually give it a little caress on my way in or out. It just reminds me of who I am and what is important to me in the midst of such a routine activity and before I start or end my day. I treasure those small reminders, so that is something that I have incorporated into my Judaism.

And that is the crux of liberal Judaism - studying where these traditions come from, wrestling with what that means for us individually, and finding a way to observe that is true to who we are and what we believe. Because if I start strapping boxes to my arm every morning out of obligation, I can guarantee you it would have no meaning to me and that the beautiful words of the V'ahavta would be completely lost in the details of an activity that, to me, is so far from what God intended us to take from that passage.

It annoys me when people think being Reform, Reconstructionist, or even Conservative is the "easy" way to be a Jew, or when they dismiss it as "picking and choosing." It irritates me that some people think that one would align with these movements as a shortcut because, meh, Orthodoxy is just too difficult. Being a liberal Jew is not a shortcut or a cheat. It certainly can be if one wants it to be, simply because you will not be judged for what you individually choose to do or not do in your observance. So if someone just doesn't want to be bothered with certain things even though they feel those things are important, they can do so relatively invisibly within Reform. We are all on our own journeys and have made our own choices. There is undeniably a lot of freedom in that, and there is not within Orthodoxy where everyone is expected to be living in exactly the same way (though clearly that strict level of observance feels comforting and rewarding to those practicing it). But for a liberal Jew who is conscientious and actively engaged in their own spirituality and Jewish identity, liberal Judaism offers many dilemmas and hard choices. You have to educate yourself on a rule or custom, wrestle with whether or how it is meaningful to you, and then make the choice to observe or not observe, and how to observe, based on that. That's not as easy as it sounds, because you may understand the meaning in something that is still very, very difficult for you to follow, especially when you are not surrounded by a community who is all following it. 

For example, if my own personal research and spiritual struggle around kashrut (the kosher laws) had led me to feel it was spiritually significant to me and would connect me more to God and/or to my community, it would be extremely difficult to move in that direction when my own rabbi enjoys shrimp and my wife's favorite food is bacon - both things that would be terribly difficult for me to give up. I would have to be very self-disciplined and would have to seek out the few other liberal Jews who keep kosher in order to feel supported. My own personal research and struggle did lead me to feel the need to observe Shabbat by not working, and this is definitely not always easy. I've had to turn down opportunities to make extra money or to be flexible with the possibility of going back to work only part-time after having a baby. I've had to suck up a crappy scheduling change to make it fair that I don't work occasional Saturdays when other supervisors do. For someone who is Orthodox, this would be easier because everyone within their community observes Shabbat this way and it's unthinkable that any of them would go to work. It just wouldn't even be an option. But within my own temple community, there are many people who work Saturdays without blinking. They have chosen other ways to make Shabbat separate from the week and don't feel the need for work to necessarily be the determinant. That makes it more of a challenge for me to practice this on my own.

It's not "the easy way" to have to put so much thought into every single way of being to ensure you are doing what's meaningful for you and that you have the willpower and self-discipline to keep it up when it's not consistent in your community. In a way, it could be seen as easy to just know without a doubt that you have to follow certain rules and to be ensconced in a community in which everyone is doing that and would gasp and pull you back on track if you were to slip. I enjoy the struggle and the self-accountability. I appreciate immensely that every choice I'm making is what makes me feel more solid in my Jewish identity and feel closer to God. I feel good about not doing anything just because I feel obligated to even if it is antiquated or illogical or seems to lose the point through all the obsession over details.

That is why I made MY choice. And I'm glad that all Jews have the ability to affiliate with a movement that best reflects their needs.