Perfect Moment Monday: Reversals of Fortune

Over a year ago, I wrote about a woman I know solely because of infertility, and I wondered whether I should pursue a friendship. Following that post we continued to talk when we happened to see each other, but I didn’t end up specifically pursuing that friendship. After many failed IVFs, she is no longer pursuing treatments. Because of that, it felt like we were in different places in the process, and it just didn’t feel right to talk to her about my continuing treatments (whether more failures or, hopefully, an eventual success) while she had no possibility of conception. When I became pregnant, she was genuinely happy for me, but I felt awkward about having left her behind.

I haven’t seen her since early summer. Between bedrest and having newborns at home, I have barely left the house/hospital at all since mid-summer. Last week, during a rare outing, I ran into her. She has been pursuing international adoption, and since the last time I saw her, she has been matched with a child. In a couple of months she will have the baby in her arms. I am absolutely thrilled for her.

The Perfect Moment came when I realized that her baby is just two months older than Burrito and Tamale — close enough that they might become buddies. Somehow, in less than a year, we went from two nearly-hopeless infertiles, weary from years of failed treatments, to two mommies on the brink of planning playdates. It really can happen.

Find more Perfect Moments at Weebles Wobblog.

Perfect Moment Monday: Repurposed

When the Burrito had his bris, the moyle gave DH a list of supplies we needed to help him recover. With a house full of guests, DH came running to me and declared urgently, “I need to go to the drugstore before it closes.”

He didn’t need to go to the drugstore.

Baby Tylenol? I already had it stocked.

Petroleum jelly? I have Aquaphor, which is supposed to be superior to Vaseline for babies.

Gauze pads? No way we had gauze pads, right? Wrong! I had them tucked away in a bag in the bottom of my closet, along with a sharps container, alcohol swabs, and over a hundred syringes and needles. Leftovers from IVF #2 and Perfunctory IUI #7 (the one that produced the Burrito and the Tamale).

It was tremendously gratifying to be able to help the Burrito with the vestiges of old pains.

Who would have thought that infertility would ever come in handy!

See some other Perfect Moments at Weebles Wobblog.

Perfect Moment Monday: Backdrop

Remember way back to February when I was about to embark on Perfunctory IUI #7 in preparation for IVF #3 and, to honor the occasion, I purchased a piece of abstract artwork depicting Don Quixote? Or the next month when I was in Quixote’s homeland and couldn’t resist a Quixote sculpture, having just become pregnant via a treatment that wasn’t supposed to work? The drawing and sculpture are on display together in my house, and I look at them many times a day.

The Perfect Moment occurred when I was taking some photos of the Burrito in his father’s arms, and I realized that, just by happenstance, the two Quixotes formed the backdrop. (Child pictured; click through to see the photo.)

I’ve been having a bit of a rough time lately (more on that soon), so the reminder is particularly poignant: He and his sister are my Impossible Dreams come true.

Perfect Moment Monday: Stalker, Scale, and Sister

Several perfect moments this week.

First, remember the construction workers who constantly dangled outside my hospital window? They have followed us upstairs to the NICU. My first reaction was, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The hard part is remembering to close the blinds when I’m pumping or nursing. That, and blocking out the constant drilling and hammering. The babies couldn’t care less.

Second, another picture of the Burrito, nursing. I didn’t realize how much bigger my (already large) breasts had gotten until I saw this picture. No wonder none of my bras fit anymore. Of course, his head is rather small (30 cm. circumference), but c’mon, this is crazy. To keep the photo off random spam RSS feeds, you’ll need to click to see the photo (NSFW!).

Finally, the first real photo of the Tamale on the blog. She is waving hello to her bloggy friends.

Perfect Moment Monday: Burritos

Sorry about disappearing for a couple of days. I’ve… uh… been busy.

Babies’ health is better than I could have imagined. They are big for their age and so precocious, impressing everyone with their breathing, feeding, alertness, sweet demeanors, and strength. I am desperately in love. I still can’t quite believe they are mine, and the whole process still blows my mind. Your tummy gets bigger and then fully-formed humans come out? Really?

During delivery I experienced some “complications” but I am now on the mend and I will be fine. When we were in the midst of the complications, making life-changing (and potentially life-threatening) decisions, part of my brain was thinking about what a good blog post it would make. I’ll tell you all about that, as well as give you a better picture of Burrito B and more details on both babies, very soon.

I’ve missed you!

Perfect Moment Monday: Prognosis

Head perinatologist: “You have a good chance of making it to 34 or 35 weeks.”

Perfect Moment Monday: The Views from My (Temporary) Window

The fabulous Andrew Sullivan has a regular feature in his column at The Atlantic called The View From Your Window. Often it’s a pretty picture in an interesting locale. Other times there are themes, such as the recent wildfires in California.

Here are two views on different days from the window of my hospital room (still here for the time being, though there’s talk of going home this week — and I may take them up on it).

There are windows into others’ Perfect Moments at Weebles Wobblog.

Perfect Moment Monday: Clean-ish Sweep

(Note: Pregnancy mentioned, though the post is ultimately about infertility.)

A year ago, I wrote about the clean sweep I had to make of my house in advance of a visit from DH’s family.

I hid it all. Books on fertility and pregnancy. The few baby items I’d purchased or made over the years. Prenatal vitamins. Basal body thermometer. Stupid piece-of-crap ovulation predictor watch. Syringes. Sharps boxes. RE paperwork. Fertility medications, unrefrigerated and refrigerated. (The latter required a bit of creativity, as I described last year.)

The family is back. Just before they drove up, I made another sweep of the house (a rather cursory sweep, since I’m on bedrest and not supposed to be roaming around the house).

• Books on pregnancy displayed prominently on bookshelf. Fertility and infertility books scattered among them — I will not hide them anymore.
• Baby items are everywhere. We did have to move some of the bulkier items to different rooms so that the people sleeping in the babies’ room can actually get through the door, but that was tidying rather than hiding.
• Prenatal vitamins out in the open.
• BBT and ovulation predictor still hidden wherever I left them — they were useless to me, so who knows where they are.
• RE paperwork left in the same pile in the office, under the mounds of OB and MFM paperwork.
• Syringes, sharps boxes, and meds cleared out of the bathroom cabinet. They filled a grocery bag to overflowing, mostly with unused needles. Hundreds and hundreds of needles. Infertility aside, it would be a little weird to go into anyone’s bathroom and find a giant sharps box and hundreds of unused needles. More an act of courtesy than subterfuge.
• Refrigerated meds haven’t been in the refrigerator for months (only a few leftover progesterone suppositories remain). I had stuffed them in a drawer somewhere during a prior clean sweep when I was pregnant but not yet telling people. This time, I am leaving them wherever they happen to be. Anyone who goes digging around the deep recesses of drawers deserves to find vaginal suppositories. Too bad they don’t have VAGINAL written in big letters on the package.

The perfect moments?

1. I don’t have to hide my pregnancy, nor the intention to become pregnant, because I am finally pregnant. My giant belly and I are on bedrest; I couldn’t hide it even if I wanted to.
2. If someone wants to snoop around and learns about our infertility history, fine. I am okay with that. I’m still not going to advertise it, but after 7 years of secrecy, if someone wants to ask the question, I will tell them the answer.

See what other perfect moments people have to offer on Perfect Moment Monday, hosted by Lori from Weebles Wobblog.

Perfect Moment Monday: A New Hope

This week’s Perfect Moment is more of a process than a single moment.

I’m a geek in many ways, but I’m not especially a Star Wars geek. I like Star Wars as much as any girl born in the 70s — well maybe just slightly more. After all, I own Star Wars Monopoly, and on years when we celebrate Christmas, there’s a Boba Fett ornament on the tree. Some of the following information is common knowledge or available through careful movie viewing, but some requires deep backstory research.

Although it contains universal (ha ha) themes like finding your niche, connecting to others, and searching for truth, Star Wars doesn’t have storylines that particularly resonate with most people. Your arch-enemy turns out to be your father? That person with whom you have a strangely strong connection turns out to be your twin? The murder of your adoptive parents is engineered by your biological father (who is the stepbrother of your adoptive father) and carried out by clones who once fought alongside your mentor? Not so universal.

I’ve always been aware, in a casual sense, that there are adoption themes in the story, and the boy-girl twin connection was been brought to my attention by more than one friend when we announced our babies’ sexes, but it was only last week as I watched all 6 movies on TV that the extent of the ALI themes has really emerged for me.

Boy-Girl Twins
Everyone with a passing awareness of Star Wars knows that Luke and Leia are boy-girl twins, separated at birth.

Only a few people know, since it’s part of the Star Wars universe outside the movies, that Leia and Han Solo later become parents of “Jedi twins” Jacen and Jaina. (It’s not as cute as it sounds — Jacen eventually turns evil and Jaina has to kill him.)

When we announced that we are having boy-girl twins, our normally geeky friends said, “Luke and Leia!” and our extra-geeky friend said, “Jedi twins! Jacen and Jaina!”

Adoption
It’s a key plot point that when Luke and Leia are separated at birth, they are each adopted.

Kin adoption: Luke is adopted by his uncle Owen and aunt Beru. Owen is the step-brother of Luke’s father Anakin. Luke is aware that they are his aunt and uncle, but he is told that both of his parents have died, when in fact his father is alive but is a threat to Luke’s survival.

Open adoption and closed adoption: Leia is adopted by Prince Bail Prestor Organa and his wife Breha. In Revenge of the Sith, Prince Organa says that he and his wife have “always talked of adopting a baby girl.” This is open adoption in one sense — the Organas are aware of their daughter’s origins and knew both of her birth parents. But, it’s closed adoption for the rest of the triad. It is not open for the birth parents because the birth mother dies in childbirth and does not know the fate of her children, and the birth father does not know of Leia’s existence because he was not aware of the twin pregnancy. (What, they can fly through space at light speed but they don’t have ultrasound?) It’s also not open for the adoptee because although she knows she was adopted, she does not know the identities of her birth parents nor the existence of her twin brother.

There are also informal adoption themes, with many references to people being “like a son” or “like a father” as part of a mentoring relationship.

Reproductive Technologies
The stormtroopers are clones of Jengo Fett, genetically modified for accelerated growth and docility (except for one unmodified clone, whom Jengo kept to raise as a son, and who later went on to become my Christmas ornament). Although most of us don’t deal directly with issues of cloning or genetic modification, there are a lot of debates right now about genetic selection and modification, particularly as they relate to reproductive technologies. The media (and public at large?) seems pretty freaked out about human cloning.

Infertility and Pregnancy Loss
This is the part that I didn’t learn until this week, because it requires delving into the Wookiepedia (yes, that’s what it’s called). The Organas had “always talked of adopting a baby girl” because they were infertile, and had lost at least two pregnancies. Breha was told that another pregnancy could kill her. A couple of years pass before Leia enters their lives.

The full quote from Prince Organa when he agrees to adopt Leia: “We’ve always talked of adopting a baby girl. She will be loved with us.” Now, his statement resonates so much more.

Perfect Moments
We already knew that people dealt with adoption, loss, and infertility everywhere on earth, but it turns out that these themes are also prevalent in a galaxy far far away.

It’s your last day to vote for always-inspirational Lori from Weebles Wobblog for the Most Inspiring Blog Award.

Perfect Moment Monday: Back in the Saddle

It has literally been almost a year since I’ve properly worked in the pottery studio, partly because work obligations have precluded attending my usual class and partly because the Great Pottery Catastrophe of 2008 took the wind out of my sails. I did take one class in a very different technique, but I haven’t sat down at the wheel in far too long. I’d been toying with the idea of building a studio in my home, but once I learned that I was finally pregnant, I decided that it should wait (high startup costs + toxic chemicals + 2000 degree heat = not great with curious little ones running around). My pottery pursuit was put on indefinite hiatus.

Last week I got an email about a summer pottery class with a new teacher (one who was not implicated in the Great Catastrophe). I wanted very much to take the class, but I decided that I shouldn’t because it’s not a good idea to do pottery while I’m pregnant. It’s a great hobby for infertiles, but not as good for pregnant women, between the chemicals used in the glaze and the physical strain of certain tasks. Plenty of women are able to continue pottery throughout pregnancy, but since twin pregnancy is higher-risk than most, I thought that it would be prudent for me to opt out. This sensible decision made me sad, because I miss pottery a lot, but I’ll do anything to keep these babies safe.

I mentioned this to my husband. He said, “You should take the class! You can stay away from the chemicals and modify things to take it easy. It will be a long time before you can do it again. For once, we won’t be traveling much so you’ll actually be in town for most of the classes. Pottery makes you happy.”

His optimistic clarity was one perfect moment; I foresee many more perfect moments to come — starting with my first class tomorrow!

Lori from Weebles Wobblog is in charge of Perfect Moment Mondays. And she’s up for a blog award for being so inspiring — vote early and often!