Remember when I said that you’d probably regret being so nice and supportive?  And that you’d most likely end up wishing you hadn’t encouraged me to write what I’m feeling?

Yup.

I’m well on my way to making that prediction come true.  And I pity you.  I really do. 

After last week’s confession post you all were really, truly wonderful.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  I heart you.  You might have opened a crazy pregnant lady Pandora’s box (does that sound dirty or is it just me?), but I’m glad you did.

[And aaaaaaaany minute now you’ll be BEGGING me to stop whining and just tell a damn story about the magic crystals my Mom used to tape to various parts of our bodies when we had any kind of ache or pain…]

Pregnancy is just not anything like I expected it to be. And frankly, I’m shocked.  SHOCKED I tell you.  I don’t know why, but after almost five years of trying to get pregnant, I figured once I was there I would be sporting a delicious little ‘bump’ like they show in US W.eekly, my luminescent skin would literally light up the night sky and my hair would glow like a shampoo commercial.

I would somehow, (I guess, this wasn’t thought out very well) become independently wealthy and not have to drag my huge ass to work every day, but instead could sit around watching A Ba.by St.ory (eating an all-organic lunch) and decorating a gorgeous nursery. And I’d go on walks (or even easy jogs!) and then pre-natal yoga and then I’d talk to the babies and relax while BeBop fixed a delectable dinner and then I’d retire for a soothing night’s slumber filled with happy baby dreams.

How’s that working out for you, you ask? Not so hot. And where on earth did you get such a bizarre and totally unrealistic expectation of being pregnant?  Fuck if I know. 

BeBop asked me the other night if I was happy being pregnant. "Hmmm…" I answered.  "I’m happy I AM pregnant, but if you’re asking if I’m happy actually being pregnant, I dunno.  That’s a harder question."

The truth is this: I’ve been completely and thoroughly stressed out almost every second of every day since I found out I was pregnant. And yes, I do feel like shit saying that.

Part of it is the stress and worry of being pregnant and thinking about the health of my babies.  Work has been overwhelming.  My sister was on bed rest.  My Mom was torturing my sister with organic mattress pads and pro-biotics and causing all sorts of family strife that led to crying, yelling and nasty e-mails flying back and forth between all of us.  BeBop and I sold our condo, and don’t have a place to go. My Mom got sick on a layover in DC and sent my Dad on to South Africa without her, flying home and going straight to the hospital without telling us.  (Yes, that was a delightful little surprise.  After a colonoscopy, she found out she has an ulcer which is, honestly, the best case scenario.  But it was scary as hell.)  And the NT scan results. 

And I don’t mean to sound so ungrateful.  I guess I just wish I’d known that when you’re pregnant, ‘real life’ continues on around you, and for some strange reason I really did not consider this.

I am already getting the whole guilt-ridden, self-flagellation Mom thing down. 

I feel terrible I am so anxious when I should just be happy we’re pregnant with twins.  I should be making time for meditating and going to pre-natal yoga. I should be swimming regularly. I should be writing a weekly letter to the babies, shamelessly stealing the idea from other bloggers, but here I am at 17 weeks and have I managed to do this once?  No.

The goods news is, I’m totally prepared for a lifetime of feeling horribly guilty and knowing that no matter what I do, it’s not enough.

At least I got that going for me.

But here’s where you can help, because I know you’re just sitting there in front of your computer wondering, how can I help? (Unless, of course, after reading this you’re really thinking:  how can I defy the laws of physics and thread my body through the fiber optic network, reconstitute my body in Watson’s office and then STRANGLE THE VERY LIFE FROM HER?! Errr…in that case just move along.  Nothing more to see here.)

But if you are willing to help, I just haven’t been able to come up with a cute little nickname for the babies. The bugs?  The beans? 

I’m a girl who lives for nicknames, whose dog barely knows his real name because he’s always called something else, whose kids’ names will have built in nicknames because I’m such a fan, and yet I cannot think of a single thing to call them in utero. 

So can you give me some suggestions?  I don’t know how I’d manage without you.

Okay.

[Takes a deep breath.]

I did NOT want to blog about this.  I so did not.  I wanted to keep skating along the surface of this little project, by writing about pickle cravings and gaining weight at an alarming pace and telling shocking-but-true stories about my Mom.

But then I realized I wasn’t being true to myself, or the reason I started this blog in the first place, which was to honestly chronicle my experiences with trying to get pregnant.

When I started this blog over a year ago, the idea of actually being pregnant seemed so remote.  As in, I could get pregnant or go to the Moon or win a Tony for starring on Broadway.  SURE.  Any of those things was just as likely to occur.

Once I got pregnant, I found myself unwilling (unable?) to talk about some of the stress and anxiety I was feeling.

Some of that was, of course, wanting to avoid hurting or offending those of you still in the IF trenches. I guess I thought it was somehow okay to complain about morning sickness or fatigue, but anything deeper or more dramatic than that would be like a slap in the face of someone wanting nothing more than to be pregnant, nauseous and exhausted all of the time.

So my posts have been superficial, smart-assey and, of late, not a true reflection of what I’m going through.

Here goes one piece of this puzzle, one of the things I haven’t wanted to discuss in the last couple of weeks:  the results of my NT scan.

Remember when I wrote, in a rather off-handed way, I thought that everything was okay, but that I hadn’t gotten the official results back yet?

Um, yeah.

[Note to self: Do not be an asshole.  Also? Do not be so cavalier about this pre-natal testing business.  It is not for the faint of heart, so just be prepared. For anything.]

Twin A came back in the ‘increased risk’ category for Down’s. 

No one wants to see that piece of paper with the box encircled by dashed lines containing the words, INCREASED RISK.

To be more specific, my risk is 1:286. This is based on my maternal age (so kindly referred to as ‘advanced’ at 39), the NT measurement from the scan(2.4mm) and the blood work.

It did not factor in that we did PGD, which is reportedly 90-95% accurate.

According to the genetics specialist I spoke with, the average result for a 39 year old woman is 1:112 and the cut-off for ‘normal’ is 1:300. So my result of 1:286 is so, so close to being in that ‘normal’ range.

So close to not seeing those words ‘increased risk,’ but not close enough.

I folded the test results in half and stuck them in a file labeled, appropriately, ‘test results.’ But that was supposed to be for MY test results, not the babies’. For all those reams of paper from the last five years and our IVF cycle and my silly killer cell tests that keep coming back elevated that don’t really worry me.

BeBop and I spoke of what the numbers mean, but it was almost impossible for us to wrap our minds around what they signify. 

That’s what, less than 1/2 a percent?  Never been good at math. And it’s not factoring in that we did PGD!  But if someone said you had a 1 in 286 chance of winning the lottery, wouldn’t you be sort of happy, like thinking those were kinda good odds?  So is it good news, or sort of bad, scary news? How the frick am I supposed to know!? 

So we went round and round, and then spoke with the genetics specialist at Dr.  Z’s office and my OB. Both of whom, in general, reassured us that this was not really something to worry about.

Unless we were worried about it.

In the end, we decided against doing the amnio. If my odds were worse or my overall sense of anxiety was higher, I would do it.  If we hadn’t done the PGD I would do it. If I felt I needed the peace of mind to get me through the remainder of my pregnancy, I would go ahead.

But I think I’m okay. I could still change my mind, I’m only 16w3d today. 

Mostly, I’m fine now.  I think everything will be fine.  I think we’ll be able to face whatever comes our way. But I do have my freak out moments, when I bring up the topic again and talk to BeBop about it.

My gut tells me it’s okay.  My gut tells me not to do the amnio.  But it’s hard.  And scary. 

And honestly, I wasn’t sure what to write or how to write it.  For those of you who have recently faced such issues and wrote about them on your blogs, reading about your experiences has helped me tremendously, which is another reason why I decided to stop pussing out and just blog about the goddamn thing.

But beware, this probably opened the floodgates and now, instead of writing about my Bigfoot-like facial hair problems or my dog or how my Mom rubbed sacred ash from India on my sister’s newborn baby’s head (which caused a RASH, by the way!) this will probably devolve into a neurotic, fear-laden blog replete with hand-wringing and indecision and anxiety attacks galore and tons and tons of self-pity.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

(And I don’t need no Bearded Lady jokes, thankyouverymuch.)

After my last mini-post (sorry about the picture debacle – my bad.  The photo showed up in one browser window but not another and I’m just not even close to being smart enough to figure out why or what to do to fix it. Trust me, he’s cute) the lovely Lady in Waiting commented that I have lots of exciting stuff going on.

And boy, is that an understatement!

In addition to growing these two little tiny things (who need better names, it would seem…) inside me, and being thrilled about my sister’s baby, and trying to avoid having a nervous breakdown because of all the work I have to do, and being worried about not discussing my hoped-for maternity leave with my boss yet, we are also smack in the middle of selling our condo and trying to buy a house.

Good lord in heaven, woman, what is wrong with you??

I know, I know.

We were going to sell in the fall, but when we decided to do IVF we postponed until spring. And then WHAM! it was spring and holy crap we’re pregnant and if we’re going to do this, it better be now. Before I’m too big or we have two tiny babies and everything is just a mad-cap dash of crying and poopy diapers and breastfeeding woes and all the other good stuff…

So we put our place on the market and have only had one open house, and I think we have close to ten people wanting to make offers.  Which is pretty cool.

But of course that means we now have a couple of months to find a house we can afford, which in the Bay Area is no easy task.

I had to do another IVIG infusion on Tuesday, the day of the brokers’ tour when 30-40 people would be traipsing through the place.  I cried the entire way down to the medical office, calling BeBop and sobbing into the phone that I was SOOO stressed out and I just couldn’t take much more.

Well, the only good thing about those damn infusions is that it forced me to sit on my ass for over three hours, tied to the reclining chair with IV tubes, and do nothing but read, listen to my iPod or chat with the other ladies there.  So although I loathe these things, I have to admit in the end it was a pretty good stress reliever.

So one more open house this weekend, and we take offers next week.  Only a few days of me running around like a crazy woman every morning before work, frantically cleaning and dusting and making sure the shower drain isn’t clogged with my hair* and that the dog’s slobbery toys are hidden and the plants look fresh and the wood surfaces dusted and the place is just glowing with an all-over BUY  ME vibe. I complain to  share with BeBop incessantly about how tired I am, how it’s hard for me to just get my fat ass up and out of the door in the morning without all of this extra pressure and how "I’m growing our TWO babies inside of me so YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF" which, really, there’s no good response to so he has to pick up any slack.

OY.

In other news, did you know that if you literally get no exercise other than opening pickle jars** and waxing your own face nightly, you pretty much lose all muscle tone, coordination AND aerobic ability?  I did not know this. Until today, when I decided to go to the pool for a swim.

Do you remember the The Great Swimming Debacle of 2006?  For some reason, I momentarily forgot the humiliation that comes with getting into a bathing suit in public and decided to swim some laps.  ‘Some’ meaning about three because Sweet Jesus, I am in terrible shape.  Just the sheer exertion of putting on said bathing suit and turtle-like goggles made me tired. Which is why after about four minutes of swimming I was done.

But I’m hoping to build up to, say, ten laps and fifteen minutes because, really, this is just too pathetic.  Even for me.

On the little sister new baby front, it seems all is going pretty well and my sister got to go home yesterday, which was great.  She said she’s not too sore from the c-section, which is also good. When I spoke to her soon after the birth, she said, "You know, Mom’s not too great in a crisis situation…"

I did know this.

Despite being trained as a nurse, she’s really not that comfortable in a medical environment,  but maybe it’s just when family members are involved. My sister said once they decided on doing surgery, they were rushing around getting her ready and my brother-in-law had gone home to walk their dogs, not expecting the c-section.

My sister said she was trying to get my Mom to call him and tell him to haul ass back to the hospital STAT, and my Mom was sort of dawdling around, all the while they were shaving her pubes (my sister’s, not my Mom’s, which would have been really weird!) and rolling her gurney down the hall towards surgery.  In the end, her husband did get there, just in time.

In a startling development, it seems my Mom is actually being fairly helpful.  I guess she’s going to cook and maybe even clean for my sister, but I’ll have to see that to believe it.

In true Watson’s Mom fashion, she’s been rubbing sacred ash from an Indian Guru on the baby’s forehead, which I’m sure will go over REAL well with the pediatrician who must wonder what in the HELL that grey chalky substance on the kid’s head is?!? 

See what I have to look forward to?

*Not to sound all annoying and complainey, but it does seem a TAD unfair that while I would LOVE some of my facial hair to fall out on its own accord, it seems like someone glued it into the follicles with cement, while the hair in my head is falling out by the fistful each morning so that the bottom of my shower looks like a bear skin rug.  GA-ROS.

**Can I just mention that my pickle craving is gone?  GONE I tell you.  Almost the second I got to thirteen weeks, that was IT for the pickles.  Before this, the sheer mention of a dill pickle would cause my mouth to fill with saliva, like some kind of freakish pregnant Pavlov experiment subject.  I mean, literally, when I thought of eating a pickle, I would start to drool uncontrollably.  And now? Pickle shmickle.  And I have about seventeen jars of unopened pickles to prove it.

Can someone please get this woman to STOP feeding me pickles for dinner?  Really. 

It’s getting redonkuluos.

OMIGOD, work is so busy!

It is literally kicking all three of our asses. I barely have time to read and comment on your blogs, much less write any of the tripe I usually try to fill up this space with.

So I’ll update you, The Oneliner Style:

First of all, THANK YOU oh so sweet people of the internet (she says shyly, kicking her right foot back and forth along the ground and looking up at you from under her eyelashes…). Thank you for saying I’m not boring. I love you. And now I’m reconsidering my self-imposed ban on posting any belly pictures, only because even if I DO bear an uncanny and very disturbing resemblance to one of those whales recently stranded in the Sacramento Delta, I think you would all lie and write very nice things about how I’m not huge at all, and how I’m crazy I’m soooo not big and so on and so forth, and who wouldn’t love THAT.

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Next up:  I think the NT scan went well, although they don’t really give you the official results there. Knowing that, I told BeBop he didn’t have to come with me, because why have him take yet another day off?  Well, now I know why. Because I showed up in a crowded waiting room filled with couples, as the only single lady there.  And people looked at me with pity in their eyes, like I was the poor single knocked up girl.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Only they DID look at me like I was alone and pathetic, unless I’m totally imagining all that which is entirely possible.

The technician totally reminded me of an Eastern European gypsy of some sort. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) With a thick accent, a colorful head scarf and huge jangly gold earrings. I was afraid she would pickpocket my fanny pack while I was looking at a map.  (Was that tasteless?  Probably.) Anywhoosers, I kept trying to hear the stats and it seemed like everything was under 3mm, so I guess I’ll wait for the results to come back, but in general I’m feeling fine about everything.

++++

Next:  The movie!  It was GREAT!  Great, if you don’t mind starving your ass off and not eating until after 9:00 PM!!  I forgot that normal people (read:  non-pregnant people) can actually have a few drinks and some light appetizers and watch a movie and then eat dinner at 9:30 at night. I, on the other hand, cannot do that.

I had my emergency set of crackers in my little black clutch, which I scarfed as soon as the movie started. Then my two Mentos, which I always carry also in case of emergency.  Then I started to freak out and was about to devour the lint at the bottom of said purse I was so hungry…but I managed to make it until the party started, only to realize with sheer horror that because Rata.tou.ille is set in Paris, the party had a Parisian theme.

Did you know that lots of French food is not so good for pregnant ladies?  I did not know this.  The caterer provided tons of wine (natch!) and crates of soft cheeses and fish and cold cuts in the form of Croque Monsieurs.  I had to eat the damn sandwiches for fear of literally starving to death and/or starting to devour BeBop’s left arm. (Note to Listeria:  You can SUCK IT.)

But the movie was awesome and if you can get past the idea of a rat in a kitchen (which, to be perfectly honest, did take me a sec.) the story is amazing and creative and the animation is just gorgeous and I will definitely see it again in the theater, when I’m not exhausted and stuffed into a tight dress and tight shoes with an aching tail bone.

++++

Moving on: my little sister is being induced on Monday — yikes!  My Mom is flying down to LA on Monday, and is already inquiring about the proximity of  Sherman Oaks to my sister’s house because, apparently, there’s a fabulous chiropractor there and my Mom thinks a newborn should be seen by a chiropractor to get his little head and neck CRACKED back into place. And that’s just the beginning…Lord help us!

++++

Since I rarely dress up these days, I asked BeBop to take a photo of me at the gala and here it is, for your viewing pleasure. I’ll write more when I have ten seconds to put a cogent thought together!

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