My creepy alien baby could beat up your creepy alien baby.

Creepy alien baby! You will see what I mean when I post pictures.

Oh, by the way, IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And he is healthy, with a big ol' brain and a beautiful beating heart.

Sterilized hallways REDUX.

Woke up this morning with a fever, chills, nausea, headache and some pretty bad random muscle pains. Called my doc, who called the hospital, who told me to come back in. My doc was kind enough to add that "Oh! It looks like that culture we did on you last week was actually positive!" I spent another 5 hours in L&D, and they redid all the tests. Armed with the NEW KNOWLEDGE of my POSITIVE CULTURE which nobody thought to call me about, or tell the hospital about when they asked for my records, they basically said, "well, that's an infection - here are some antibiotics!" This took five hours because they needed the attending to sign off on this before they could discharge me with a prescription and he was in the midst of a C-section. And they were out of pillows! And they wouldn't give me anything to eat even though I was STARVING, "just in case." I lay shivering in a hospital bed for hours and hours in awful pain. Despite it all, everybody was very nice for me, and it's good to know what's wrong and how to fix it. Thanks everybody for all of your kind words and thoughts.

ULTRASOUND TOMORROW! Can't wait!

Sterilized hallways and green Jello.

After a sleepless night filled with excruciating pain, I am now in the hospital. Still don't know what's wrong - will post information as it comes.

UPDATE - After many merry hours in the labor and delivery unit, it has been concluded that nobody knows what is wrong. All of my tests came back normal, and the pain (though still really bad) is responding well to Tylenol. They sent me home and told me to keep an eye out. Now would be a really good time to have a baby daddy that could fetch me Tylenol (we're an Ibuprofen-only household) and stroke my hair and tell me everything will be okay. It's mighty lonely over here. Thank you all so much for your kind thoughts and words.

A very merry unbirthday.

I have notoriously crappy birthdays. This was not always true. As I was looking through old photo albums for pictures to show T&V I found snapshots of what looked like my 5th birthday (Batman themed, of course), with a house full of smiling kids and a very giddy birthday girl. But as I got older, it got worse and worse. I sort of have this feeling that the world should stop and revolve around me on my birthday, and I'm inevitably disappointed. But it's not just me being a little snot - my grandfather's funeral was on my 15th birthday, and on my 18th an ex-boyfriend dumped me, which sent me into a tailspin of epic proportions since I was new at college and having a hard time transitioning and making friends and ended up bed-ridden with crippling depression for the rest of the year.

My 21st birthday is on October 23rd, and I will be about 7 and a half months pregnant. THIS BUMS ME OUT. As a previously adamantly not-recovering addict (totally a story for another blog, but yeah), quitting drinking and drugs is a daily struggle with a momentous amount of suck. My 21st birthday was supposed to be, well, everything a 21st birthday normally is, except MORE, because it's me. It's that whole it's-a-special-occasion excuse to do basically everything I can get my hands on. And in a less fucked up way, I'm supposed to be able to go to dinner with my family and order a cocktail and take a picture drinking it and blah blah blah.

It's all this stuff I had to GIVE UP - no rollercoasters this summer (my favorite things), no post-coital cigarettes, postponing my dental surgery so that I can have the full amount of drugs I will need with it, postponing drugs in general (oh god I hope nobody tells me this one is a blessing - YEAH DRUGS ARE BAD I GET IT), no traditional 21st birthday - and how angry I am about it, that sort of reaffirms my belief in adoption for myself. Because I'm a selfish person, and I have no qualms about that. Max Power and I simply are not ready to sacrifice our lives for the seabass's. Let me make it clear: the decision never came down to parenting or adoption. It was abortion or adoption. We are not ready or willing to be parents. Maybe that makes us terrible people, but at least we KNOW it and are availing ourselves of our options instead of ignoring what we know in order to do what other people feel we should. Now, of course, this doesn't mean we don't love the seabass, or that we won't always love him. Today, Max Power got to feel him kick for the first time (normally when I tell him to feel my belly the seabass immediately stops, as if he quiets down to respect Max Power's authority or something) and the look on his face was nuts. And I'm sure that once the seabass is born there will be lots of complicated emotions as a result, but one thing won't change: we still won't be ready to be parents. We still won't WANT to be parents. I will still want my 21st birthday, preferably IN the hospital (I've already demanded Max Power find a way to bring me a margarita the size of my head ASAP after the birth, in a Big Gulp if he has to). Maybe we're selfish - okay, we are - and maybe the shame and guilt of that will follow us for the rest of our lives. But shame and guilt is something I can deal with - having a child I resent is not.

At Max Power's this weekend. I was supposed to go home tonight (work tomorrow) but being alone in my room at night gives me panic attacks, and I'm trying to avoid those, so I'm staying. I'm so tired all the time. I feel completely worn down. I'm always cold, even though it's blisteringly hot here. The seabass kicks and squirms at the most inopportune times. I'm irritable and grumpy. I've started enjoying sex less. I've started enjoying everything less. I really just want all of this to be over - but it never will, will it? It's gonna last forever.

PS - Despite all of this, I AM SO EXCITED FOR MY ULTRASOUND ON FRIDAY! And also for my silly shirts to arrive. These are the ones I got:

http://www.cafepress.com/+maternity_ts,191725404

http://www.cafepress.com/+im_in_ur_womb_cravin_ur_foodz_maternity_dark_tshi,132300807

Is the second one funny? I was really late to the LOLcatz craze, but I find it SO FUNNY in an embarrassing sort of way. Once I was sitting in the living room of my apartment with my roommate, who was trying to study and was in a bit of an irritable mood. I started looking at LOLcatz and couldn't stop, and I was laughing so hard I was physically shaking with the effort of suppressing it. My poor roommate. So I cracked up when I saw that shirt. Funny or no?

Panic attacks.

I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder (among other things), though I don't like that it has a title, because that is not a disorder, it is life. I mean, who the hell doesn't have generalized anxiety? It's right up there with other BS diseases like restless leg syndrome and Lupus (it's never Lupus). And yet, the little DSM-IV code for "generalized anxiety disorder" shows up in the mail on all my medical bills, and I have a little bottle of oval peach-colored pills on hand at all times, at the ready for when my throat closes up and my breathing accelerates and I start sweating and my heart starts pounding and I get that weird feeling like I'm being physically restricted in a very claustrophobic way even though I'm out in the open and a metallic taste pops up in the back of my throat. This can happen at the strangest times. For example, when I saw the positive pregnancy test I just stared at it for a few minutes and then lit another cigarette. (Less reasonably, I then carried the test around in my bag with me for days, periodically checking on it to see if the cross had faded.) But for some reason, crossing 1st Ave into Alphabet City never fails to leave me choking on my own engorged heart which will have somehow resettled in the region of my throat.

Now that the seabass has signed a lease and set up his punching bag (I swear he's taking kickboxing lessons down there) in my uterus, I can't take my medicine anymore. I'm on a lot of meds, most of which my doctor has approved for use during my pregnancy. The anti-anxiety ones are the least important, in my mind, and luckily my attacks had been decreasing since the winter - from once or twice a week to once or twice a month. But in the last few weeks, they've started coming back, and in a whole new way. It happens late at night, when I'm alone with my Netflix Instaplay and my insomnia. The seabass will kick, and suddenly I will have vehemently changed my mind. Not in the whole boo-adoption way, but in the what-was-I-thinking-going-through-with-this-pregnancy way. And then I will start to wish violently that I were no longer pregnant, and that this was not my life, and that I had gone through with the abortion when I had the chance. Max Power and I probably wouldn't be together (if we even are "together" - I like my relationships complicated and impossible, clearly) but I'd be willing to trade that for a strong margarita, a whole lot of very high quality cocaine, and the assurance that I will not be responsible for the life of another human being for a very, very long time.

At these times, I start to cry uncontrollably. I get very uncomfortable in my own skin and I pace and sweat and bite my nails. And the fear wells up, the crippling fear that this will hobble me forever, that after the seabass is born I will never be able to stand up straight and look another human being in the eye. The shame of it all, and the guilt of all the years to come, years in which I will have a child but I will not be his mom, I will not nurture him at my breast or feed him his first solid food or see his first steps or yell at him to brush his teeth or tuck him into bed every night. I don't care about the differentiation of titles and what's appropriate and what's not - all I know in these moments is that something huge and momentous has plopped itself down on the tracks of my life and my train is speeding towards it with no idea what the impact will bring. All the while, my little bottle of pills looks at me and says, "sucker!"

Having been through more of my share of ridiculously traumatic experiences, mostly brought on by my own idiocy and wanderlust, I've had to deal with the anxiety fallout quite often. But this time, I don't have my two main support devices: my medicine, or my family. I know that my family is there, and supportive, but I just hate talking to them about my pregnancy. We all have a lot of complicated feelings about it, and it makes me feel super weird to open up to them about my emotions. I'm used to being overly reliant on my parents; they have literally walked me through every single crisis or semi-crisis I've encountered. But I don't think they can help me through this one. I just don't want their help on this one. I kind of wish that they would never have to know, that I could shield them from this horrible thing that I'm going to have to deal with, so that they neither have to watch me deal with it or deal with it themselves.

As for my sister... well, the two of us are very close. But she is being absolutely awful, and I'm worried that this experience is going to drive a serious wedge between us. She was the first one I told, and she's never stopped trying to urge me towards an abortion. She constantly belittles me about my choice, which she seems to think I made as a plea for attention. I know I may be oversimplifying, but her lack of support stings. A lot.

So instead of them, and instead of my pills, I've adopted some new techniques. Mostly these involve emailing bloggy friends and wailing until they cheer me up or suitably distract me. It is really nice to have that outlet, at least.

Hey mister, I'll trade you my baby for a puppy!*

I ventured up to rainy NYC this past Friday to see my brand spankin' new Spence-Chapin social worker. SW and I had a gay ol' time together. My wariness of this whole process made me pretty guarded and defensive (as did walking into the waiting area and seeing shelves full of children's books with titles like, "Does my Mommy love me?") but Spence-Chapin is great. SW spent most of our hour together reminding me constantly that I can change my mind at any point, and that over 2/3 of the women they work with end up parenting. She seemed very pleased by all my circumstances: Max Power is in the picture, my parents are supportive, and I've still got time. We talked about the services they offer - namely, boarding care, which was something I'd never heard of. For up to 30 days after the seabass is born, I can opt to have him placed in boarding care, where volunteers at the agency will look after him while letting me retain my parental rights. Then Max Power and I can visit him, and see what it's like to be away from him, before we sign anything.

Then she let me look at their prospective adoptive parents book, stressing over and over that it's not yet time for me to really be picking anybody. All the birthmom letters had a little grid on the back with the basic info for the couples (and single parents) I was looking at, which was super helpful. At a glance, I could see their ages, education levels, races, desired level of openness, planned religion for the seabass, and comfort level with prenatal drug exposure (something I worry about constantly). Also, it was pretty clear they all took a lot of time and care formatting their letters; SW told me they fret over fonts and papers and stuff for hours. I thought this was hilarious, since so many of them ended up using atrocious things like yellow paper and comic sans, and if they passed the grid test I couldn't help but start to judge them on that. And then, this couple jumped out at me. I'm not gonna say anything about them, for fear of jinxing myself, but I will say that they used normal paper, 12 pt Times New Roman font, and had excellent grammar.

The rest of my weekend was a rollercoaster. I went to Long Island to hang out with all of my friends from NYU, and brought Max Power with me. It sort of scares me how well he gets along with all of them. Sometimes, they'll take me aside and say, "Of all the guys you've brought home, we are SO GLAD it was THIS one who knocked you up." I suppose I deserve that - I have brought home many a weirdo, most of them 10+ years older than me.

When I catch sight of myself in reflective surfaces these days, I often can't believe it. I'm pretty recognizably pregnant. This has started me panicking, because as my father says, almost 100% of carried-to-term pregnancies tend to end in babies, and I have absolutely no idea how to prepare myself for the actual birth-giving. I don't know WHERE I'll be giving birth - New York seems likely, since I'm due December 14th and my finals don't start till the 17th. I don't know HOW I'm giving birth, except for the fact that I want the maximum legal limit of drugs available, and I'd like to avoid a C-section if at all possible. And I have absolutely no idea WHO I want there with me. As much as I love my parents, and as much as I normally rely on them, I hate discussing the pregnancy with them because this was not how it was supposed to happen. I've had a very hard time accepting my impending permanent adulthood, and I like to come home and feel like a little kid again when I'm with my family. Being pregnant is one of those things that really shoves you into adulthood; after all, what makes a grown person if not bringing other little people into the world? Sure, it would make me MUCH MORE of an adult if I was going to parent, but there's no use denying that my body is creating another life and that that is fucking weird. I like to joke that I want Max Power to be there so I can yell at him about how it's all his fault, but honestly for the sake of our sex life that might not be a great idea (and I just can't picture him telling me to breathe). Do I want the adoptive parents there? Gah, I simply do not know.

Funny exchange that now takes place between my sister and I quite constantly -

Her: Wanna go get some coffee?
Me: You know I can't have coffee, it's on the bad foods list you gave me! What kind of doctor are you?

(From the fabulous movie Waitress starring Kerri Russell and Nathan Fillion - or as I will always know him, Captain Malcolm Reynolds.)

I refuse to give up on my idea of getting a puppy after the seabass is born, so that I will have something to take care of in my grief. I know many a friend who credit their pets with getting them out of bed during bouts of depression, since they need to be fed and walked and loved and cared for. I know this may be a cop out, but I know myself when I get depressed (sadly, it's often, and chronic) and knowing what a risk I am for postpartum depression, I want to be armed with ideas on how to combat it. Spence-Chapin, luckily, offers very comprehensive post-birth counseling. Anyway, I want a BIG DOG that I can raise from a tiny little thing - sort of like a surrogate seabass, except not as creepy as that sounds. A German Shepherd or a St. Bernard, or something. But puppies like that are expensive, as Max Power reminds me, so I'll probably end up going to the pound. Unless, of course, I find adoptive parents willing to buy me a designer puppy - forget the ethics about puppy mills and human trafficking! I want my dog!

For inquiring minds: ULTRASOUND IS AUGUST 6TH! Don't worry, I will hastily post any information! I CAN'T WAIT!

Also, I now want all of these:
http://www.cafepress.com/+maternity_ts,191725404
http://www.cafepress.com/+maternity_dark_ts,258587720
http://www.cafepress.com/+not_responsible_maternity_ts,215813545
http://www.cafepress.com/+pregnant_with_boy_due_in_dece_maternity_ts,131960226

Seriously, this is what I spend my time doing.


*NO, I won't.

I've Never Been In Love Like This Before

I've been listening to Lauryn Hill's "To Zion" on repeat for about 2 months now. It's just... it's great, it's a great song. Here are some of the lyrics, if you don't know it:

Unsure what the balance held
I touch my belly overwhelmed
At what I have been chosen to perform
Then an angel came one day
Told me to kneel down and pray
For unto me a manchild would be born
Oh this crazy circumstance
I knew his life deserved a chance
But everybody told me to be smart
"Look at your career," they said
"Lauryn, baby, use your head"
But instead I chose to use my heart

Now the joy of my world is in Zion

How beautiful if nothing more
Just to wait at Zion's door
I've never been in love like this before
I will pray to keep you from
The perils that will surely come
See life for you my prince has just begun

Yeah, she has a kid named Zion, born to her as a single mom. I don't think very often about keeping the seabass, except when my anxiety about his future and welfare gets really bad and Max Power reminds me that we will do everything and anything we have to, even if we have to raise him ourselves (this is usually when I go all nuts about birth defects and whatnot). But he has faith we will find a wonderful adoptive couple and a lovely open adoption and blah blah blah. He's so damn sure - or at least he fakes it well for me. But see, the seabass has started kicking - usually late at night, when I'm alone - and, well, I've never been in love like this before. I worry constantly, every second of every day. I think Max Power is able to forget about it more easily.

So yeah, I'm at 20 weeks and I'm getting big. And I'm at that stage where I'm super pudgy but nobody would really pick me out as pregnant, which makes me sort of self conscious. I mean, I've embraced this pregnancy and I'm happy and excited most of the time; I kinda wanna share the exuberance with the world, instead of just looking like I had a huge lunch. Yeah, I know - a couple posts ago I talked about how uncomfortable I was with being congratulated. That's still true. It's complicated, okay?!??!?!

Anywhere, here's me being big and looking like Heidi at work:


Also, the cigarettes. Oh, the cigarettes. I was a smoker - fairly heavy, at times - and I quit cold turkey when I found out I was pregnant. I haven't slipped up at all (well, except for maybe standing a bit too close to my friends when they smoke, which they all do, in front of me and constantly). It's been two months and I would hurt anybody who wasn't the seabass for a cigarette. Seriously, I would hurt you. Yes, you. ALL OF YOU.