The High Tech Way

Our House, in the middle of Silicon Valley

Our house went on the market about a week and a half ago.  We got a very low ball offer, well below the asking price today.   We countered with the asking price and said we could do a 45 day close (rather than the 30 days we initially asked for.)

                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Baptism, part II

After receiving my most recent email, the pastor has kindly agreed to remove the word Confirmation from what we will have to say as parents during the Baptism, which brings it to something I can live with.  What a relief.  I was getting to my want-to-go-hide-in-my-bathtub-until-this-whole-thing-is-over state.  I hate conflict. And it was getting so that it would be between hating myself or disappointing someone I love, my mother-in-law.  So glad to have it resolved.

Baptism

David's family is Lutheran, Missouri Synod -- very conservative and Biblical literalists.  I grew up not in any particular church, but when I went to one it was Unitarian -- about as liberal as you can get.  They believe that you need to pursue your own spirituality and rely on a variety of texts, not just the Bible.  They say "Deeds, not creeds."  They believe it's all the same God. My mother was raised Catholic and left the church because they were not interested in answering her questions -- sating her intellectual curiosity.  My father's side was Unitarian.  I am a person of faith, but not one of religion.

David and I have avoided joining a church, and Jack has not been Baptized.  Much of this has to do with our joint ambivalence toward many of the messages in his family's church.

His mother has asked that we Baptize Jack before we move, which means a lot to her and we would like to do it to make her happy.  But to do it before we move leaves just this Sunday left. 

We asked the pastor at David's brother's church if he would do it.  He said he would. I asked him about specific language the parents must say.  He said they are asked "will you seek God's help and the Holy Spirit's guidance in raising your child and His to fear (respect), love, and trust in God in daily living, regular worship, Sunday School, Confirmation, and youth ministry."  Parent's then answer, "Yes, with the help of God."

I asked for a change in the wording to this: “will you seek God's help and the Holy Spirit's guidance in raising your child and His to respect [instead of fear], love, and trust in God in daily living, and regular worship?”

So far the pastor has come back to me suggesting that the wording stand as is because it is really about providing consistent spiritual habits until they reach adulthood and are able to make decisions on their own.

I was excited about the Baptism with the new wording, but with the wording staying the same it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel like I will be lying to God.

Here is what I said in my email to the pastor, requesting the change in language:

David and I are wondering if you would consider changing the wording slightly for us. We ask not out of disrespect. Not at all. But we want to make sure we are being completely honest in God’s house.

Would you consider: “will you seek God's help and the Holy Spirit's guidance in raising your child and His to respect [instead of fear], love, and trust in God in daily living, and regular worship?”

You will notice the one word change (fear to respect, since you indicated that is what the meaning really is)  and that I left off the commitments after regular worship.  Here’s why.  We are not saying that we will not do Sunday School but I don’t know for sure that we will do a formal Sunday School like the one I am sure you are referring to. Also I am unfamiliar with the meaning behind the Confirmation practices of yours and other churches, and I am also unsure what a generic term like youth ministry would entail, so I feel a little uncomfortable promising those things in God’s house when I do not know if I can fulfill those promises.  I am also not sure whether the Christian denomination we eventually chose will include a Confirmation ceremony or a youth ministry.

Please know that I make these requests completely out of respect for your tradition and beliefs. I don’t want to violate them.

Please let me know if this is ok or not.

Thanks,

Jessica

This is the play by play account.  But I can tell you in my heart I don't have this in me.  It reminds me of a discussion I had with my father, who is an atheist.  He said he would convert to any religion if the person he was in love with asked him to.  I said that I wouldn't.  Just because I don't have a religion of my own doesn't mean I am not passionate about my faith.  A person who loved me would see that and respect that about me and wouldn't ask me to convert.

Overwhelmed

I have been running out of steam.  For many weeks David told me I wasn't going fast enough with the packing and cleaning.  Today, one of my new colleagues at work told me I had to pick up the pace this week. 

I am out of pace. 

It feels like where ever I go someone is telling me to move faster and do more.  There is no more.  And every request for more drains me.

Yesterday I sat for a while in the supermarket parking lot because it was a place where I could be alone and not have anyone expect me to do anything. Indeed, often lately, I find myself sitting in my car for 10 or 15 minutes when I arrive at my destination because I don't have the energy to spring from my car and enthusiastically attack the next task. I am dragging. I am emotionally spent.  That pace comment pushed me over my ever shrinking edge to the point where a single sentence made me weep through lunch. (on the plus side, David has been very sweet to me since then.)

Before lunch I asked David if he would mind if I took some time to go get a massage.  I was thinking that I could go on March 1, the day before I fly out of here, because I've already taken that day off from work. David rightfully pointed out that we will be busy that day getting things ready for the movers who are also coming on March 2. But all I could hear was that we would be too busy for me to get a massage, to do something to care for myself.

After my nervous breakdown at lunch I felt a little better. And I ended up getting a massage appointment for later this week. It will be my last time with this massage therapist. She is the one who gave me a massage in between my egg retrieval and embryo transfer during my first IVF. At the end of the massage, she gave me a gold colored stone crystal. She said she'd bought it and didn't know who it was for, and when she saw me that day she realized it had been for me.  I was so touched.

In the midst of all this stress has been the kindness of many people, from David's mom and one of our neighbors who are both allowing us to store stuff in their garages for a few weeks to a new neighbor we have yet to meet who is 79 years old and has cleared the snow from the walk and driveway of our new house -- not a small task given that we are on a corner. These are just a few of the kindnesses from other people that have simply blown me away.

How not to prepare for an Open House

So tired.  Our open house is this weekend -- actually both days, Saturday and Sunday. David has been steamrolling through with the cleaning and I was trying to help while at the same time watching Jack. 

When David moved the cat litter box into the garage, I wanted to put the cats out there at the same time. But I couldn't get all three of them and still make sure Jack didn't draw on the walls with black markers or drink Windex. He was a little high maintenance this morning because WE were stressed out and also because most of his toys were put away before the open house.

So it was hours before we could move the kitties to be with their litter box.

(If you've never had cats you may be thinking "How hard could it be to move them into the garage?"  The answer is "really fucking hard."  It involves simultaneously sweet-talking them and cornering and grabbing them. Cats do not like to be caught. And they do not do what they are told.  Jack, who witnessed this, thought we must be hurting the kitties and started crying and screaming.  It was a tough morning.)

So about a half hour before the house was supposed to open -- and moments before we were supposed to vacate it -- I noticed that one of the kitties had taken a crap in Jack's room.

David swung into action again to clean this up.  We are pros at doing this now and have a spot carpet shampooer, special enzyme cleaners, etc.

But still the smell was not one you wanted as you were preparing to present your home to potential buyers.  I was so annoyed at David for not moving the cats at the same time, or else WAITING to move the box until we could also move the cats.  But I kept my mouth shut.

He's given me a lot of shit recently about how I have not been moving fast enough to get the house ready.  But I have been moving as fast as I can.  I have a new job, I have a toddler, and I'm pregnant.  My speed is not top speed.  Yet he thinks this is because I am dawdling, and has not been kind about his displeasure with it. It has been a hard time, but we have gotten through.

Still, I kept my mouth shut today when he made this ultimate home-cleaning-for-an-open-house blunder.  I never regret taking the high road. 

We were already so so stressed out.  And we were exhausted by the time we left our house.  No need to add more unpleasantness to that.  Instead, we enjoyed the rest of the day, in spite of how beat we were/are.

There were nine people who came through during the open house, and our realtor reports that one couple with a little boy seemed particularly interested and she thought they might try to contact potential lenders over the weekend. They especially liked Jack's room, which we had painted in a bright green color and decorated with a jungle theme. (I will try to post pics before we go.)

Meanwhile, there is one more day of this weekend's open house. It will be tougher to get the kitties into the garage tomorrow because they are wise to our intentions.  But at least we will have more experience.

As strangers look at our house tomorrow, we will be taking Jack to the coast to see the Pacific ocean. He hasn't experienced it yet.

It's eye drops, not heroin

I've been looking like a total stoner since I woke up on Thursday.  Back when I was in college it might have been acceptable to arrive at the various stops of my day with eyes as red as Mars.  But today as I drop my toddler off at daycare, go to meetings for work and am just 42 years old, it's just not so cool.

On Thursday I went to my primary physician hoping that she would give me some drops for the pink eye. Not only did I sit in the waiting area for 40 minutes before I got called in, as she saw people who arrived later than I did first, but when she did see me she told me the pink eye would probably go away by itself. I wasted an hour of my time for nothing. She said to call if it hadn't gotten better by Monday and she would give me drops.

So yesterday (Friday) I went to my regularly scheduled OB appointment, nearly a week after the bleeding drama began.  And although she was rushed because of an imminent delivery at the hospital nearby, my OB had enough time to check for continued bleeding (no blood in the vaginal canal right now) and OFFER ME FREAKING EYE DROPS!  Needless to say, I happily took them, got the prescription filled, and now I just look tired instead of like I am leaving a Grateful Dead concert.

Nonetheless, this cold still has me dragging. It's been a cold with lots of congestion, the kind that interrupts your sleep.  It has progressed to a stage that causes painful coughing fits.  All of this has me thumbing through my OB practice's little handbook about pregnancy, specifically what drugs I can take. They say sudafed is OK.  They say Tylenol is OK. They say Robitussen DM is fine. I've taken scanty amounts of the sudafed and tylenol so far, and only in my most desperate moments.

Which made me think of another thing about that period of time in the Trisomy 18 pregnancy between when I learned the diagnosis and the D&E took place. During most planned and wanted pregnancies women are painstakingly careful about what drugs they take for fear of harming their child. But after our Trisomy 18 was diagnosed the perinatalogist told me to go ahead and take ibuprofen (a big no-no in pregnancy). At that point in time, that limbo time, I felt like I should still be nurturing this much loved child with everything I had -- the right nutrition, the right self care, and no drugs from the bad list.  But on the other hand, everyone acted as if it suddenly didn't matter anymore.  That was a hard thing to reconcile. And I don't know that I ever did.

Doppler, and I have pink eye

I paid for the extra fast shipping so the doppler arrived on Tuesday just before lunch. What a relief to be able to listen for the heartbeat, especially since there have been continued bleeding episodes, albeit with dark dark dark or "old" blood.

Meanwhile, I seem to have contracted the cold from hell -- one of those ones where you can't breathe through your nose at all.  And to top it off, this morning I woke up with a pink crusty eye. I am kind of a wreck.

My mixed feelings about the doppler stem from my pregnancy with William our IVF Trisomy 18 baby.  I'd gotten a doppler for that pregnancy because of the early miscarriage I'd had with our first natural pregnancy.  I felt paranoid all the time with this subsequent pregnancy that I would miscarry again.  So I frequently checked to make sure all was still well.  Funny how the heartbeat can be there and things can still totally suck.

After Will's condition (which is deemed "incompatible with life") was diagnosed via amnio but before the D&E, I stupidly listened again to his heartbeat as a way to say goodbye. It broke my own heart. 

And then I packaged up the doppler, sent an email to the company about how my baby had Trisomy 18, and left the package outside for the shipping company to pick up.  I then waited for the D&E

That memory of the last doppler during that week from hell is so vivid in my mind.  It's why I did not initially get a doppler in my pregnancy with Jack.

Actually, I did get one later. My therapist did some kind of weird therapy with me that has been used on victims of post traumatic stress disorder called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.  She told me to focus on a particular vivid memory of that week -- one of the memories was that last time with the doppler. I did this as I followed her finger with my eyes. She moved her finger back and forth like a metronome. (More info on this therapy, EMDR here) 

I actually asked her about this kind of therapy after an online friend said it had helped her deal with the loss of her twins.  When I asked about it my therapist said she'd actually been trained in it by its inventor.  We only did it once because, although it sounds like some weird little nothing, it is a really draining experience.

After we did that therapy, she asked me week after week if I'd gotten a doppler. (I was well into the Jack pregnancy). She said I didn't have to.  But eventually it almost seemed like a personal challenge to me after a while -- something I needed to do to heal more.  So eventually I got one. But I rarely used it.  I had lost faith that it could tell me whether everything was OK.

But now is different.  Now I know there are the right number of chromosomes. If there's a problem, it's most likely with the placenta.  And as bleeding continues it is reassuring to hear the little guy's heartbeat and know he's still OK in there.

Bleeding update

I called my OB's office this morning to give them an update and ask them what I should do. (Do I go to the conference for work?  Do I keep my regular OB appointment or move it up? Should I restrict my activities?)

They told me to come in right away. My doctor is not in the office on Mondays so I saw another doctor.

They gave me an u/s (everything looked a-ok).  And then I went in to see the doc.  After I gave her the details of what happened she said it is most likely a small tear in the placenta. She recommended taking it easy. No conference for me.  I asked her if it could be anything else.  She said it might be a cervical polyp or some old blood from the CVS that came out when things shifted in there.  Those two other possibilities pose absolutely no danger.  But a cervical polyp might cause additional bleeding as the pregnancy continues. There is no way to determine the actual cause of the bleeding.

This doctor said that she had a bleed when she was 17 weeks pregnant, and everything turned out fine. Her daughter is now 3 years old. 

This quick appointment was very reassuring to me.

But when I got back to work I realized it was time to tell them I was pregnant, so they didn't think I was flaking about going to the conference. So I did. And they were very understanding. I always find it surprising when my job is accommodating to my medical issues. 

So things are ok right now.  Hoping they stay that way.

Bleeding

After a day spent packing, then watching our niece take an advanced horseback riding lesson (Jack LOVED the horses) we headed over to my mother-in-law's for some take out dinner with her and my brother and sister in law.  I was playing with Jack and swinging him around in the air. Dinner was just arriving when I felt a gush of something.  I went to the bathroom and saw that I was bleeding.

I told David what was going on and went into the other room to call the after hours number of my doctor just as everyone was sitting down to dinner.

The on-call doctor called me back in 15 minutes. He said it could be a loosening of the edge of the placenta.  I should keep track of what was going on and keep them informed. If I wanted to I could go to the ER.

So that is what we did.  David's mom baby sat Jack and David and I were at the emergency room by 7:45. 

A full ultrasound -- like Level II in its thoroughness -- showed absolutely no problems.  A pelvic exam revealed a closed cervix. They sent me home.

I had some more bleeding overnight, but the dark kind. It's not quite brown, but it's not bright red either. 

I wish I could order same-day delivery of a Doppler.  I've avoided getting one since the Trisomy 18 pregnancy because it told me everything was OK then when it really wasn't and I have had an emotional problem with it since.   But suddenly I'm over that and I want one NOW!

So I am trying to take it easy today, which I'm afraid won't be so easy with a 19 month old toddler.

I am nervous about this. You know, I thought I was in the clear pretty much at this point.  I cleared the CVS nearly 4 weeks ago and I am 15 weeks 3 days pregnant.  This is supposed to be into the second trimester when you are over the major miscarriage risk.  Sigh.

Coffee

Back when I was about to start the IVF in October my acupuncturist and REs recommended that I give up one of my last guilty pleasures -- java, joe, coffee, the thing that got me going on those 5 am workdays.  I started drinking a single cup of green tea in the morning instead and have been doing so ever since.

Lately I've been allowing myself ice tea at lunch, or maybe a cola.  Sometimes I would have a decaf latte at Starbucks and nearly swoon at the scent and the flavor.

And as the level of activity has ramped over the past few months -- new job, buying another house all the way across the country, getting this house ready for sale, taking care of a toddler, and being pregnant, my energy levels have been inadequate. I have had so much trouble getting myself going in the morning with just green tea.

So I did a small dance of joy when I heard about this new study this morning. This was a study of 1200 pregnant women. They divided them into two groups, one that drank decaf and the other that drank 3 cups of regular coffee per day. When the babies were born the gestation periods were identical in both groups and so were the birth weights indicating that the coffee had no negative effect.

So for the first time since October I set up my coffee machine to brew in the morning right before I get up.  I'm making my 4 cup pot which is 1/4 regular and the other 3/4 swiss water method organic decaf.  YAY!