Happy Birthday to Max

We visited the local Vineyard (the kind of church I grew up in) and they were advertising for a Jeremy Riddle concert for his cd “The Now and the Not Yet “- it was the first time in a while that I had been reminded of that phrase, as I haven’t been in a Vineyard for three years now. I thought that it was the perfect phrase to summarize how God is answering my prayers for a child… not yet. But it’s so sweet to think that my Max and Olivia are in the “now.” Everything in their lives is perfect – no crying, no pain, no sadness. They don’t have to wait their whole lives for healing from whatever possible genetic defects they would have had, they are healed now. Praise God.

Today is my Max’s birthday; well, really his due date, but I’d like to think of today as his birthday, instead of that awful day that I lost him six months ago. I dressed up for him today, even though I can’t be celebrating with him in my arms. I hope that God is throwing him a party right now, since I can’t do it.

A few days ago I found some onesies that my husband and I had bought before we were married, specifically because one of them said “Little Engineer” on it, and that is a play off of our school mascot – “We are, we are, we are, we are the MIT Engineers.” Anyhow, they were little boy onesies and so preciously little. I wish I could have been bringing him home in one today.

I’ve really been dreading this day for the past week, as I’ve had more time to think about its impending arrival. I thought that I might feel more disconnected from him, that there would be a bigger gap created by my “not being pregnant with him” any more. But I don’t feel further away from him, just a little more at peace with his not being here.

So this is my song for you, Maxie. Mommy loves you and she can’t wait to meet you – not yet, but that day is getting closer every day!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Max
Happy birthday to you.

Update from Maryland

Hey all-

Thanks for your good wishes. We're doing well here in Maryland - we managed to buy our first "new" (used) car yesterday - a 2008 Toyota Corolla that's in mint condition. We were pretty excited to find it and both felt like it was our car when we saw it - love at first sight. :)

We got our driver's licenses, finally (after waiting for the post office to switch our locks so that we could get our mail with some updated addresses for address verification!) and that's a big relief. There's so many things on our to-do list every day; I'm really glad that Jonathan has this whole week off so that we can run around and get things done.

As for test results (drum roll, please)... Everything was negative. Which could be good news or it could be bad. It's hard to tell right now. So, we're hoping that everything is fine and that our next pregnancy will go well. No news on the pregnancy front - it's probably still too early to tell for this month (I didn't temp so I have no clue where I am right now), and it's nice that I'm not really worrying about it right now. In fact, I haven't taken a prenatal vitamin in weeks, so I should really get back on that!

I'm starting to realize how difficult it is going to be for me to make friends here. Our neighborhood appears to be full of older couples with children from 6-15 years, and we've only been to one church so far, which had no one our age (although we really liked the people, the worship and the sermon). Where do the 20-somethings hang out? Walmart? Hehe.

We love that our county library has free wi-fi! We've been able to (slowly) check our e-mail most days and it's enabling me to write to you now. We're holding out for Verizon Fios to go in our area on June 30th, which is why we don't have internet yet, and probably won't for a few more weeks - gulp!

Well, I'm signing off now - tons of things to do with our free hour of online time!

Testing, testing, 1, 2...10.

Last Thursday I had an appointment with the last midwife I saw during my pregnancy. The one who rushed through my appointment and showed us Olivia for all of five seconds, who didn't give us a picture, the last time we saw her alive. I wasn't looking forward to meeting her (the midwife) again because I didn't know if I would be angry at her or distraught or what. However, she actually ended up being really caring and thoughtful this time around, and I was glad to have gotten a second chance to meet her and forgive her for rushing through that last appointment.

We talked about how I am feeling physically and emotionally (exhausted all around) and the possibility of talking to a counselor in the future to help me walk through all of this. That part of the conversation was hard because I didn't want to look like a blubbering idiot in front of my doctor during a 15-30 minute appointment, and I know that I haven't really dealt with Olivia's death at all yet, and talking about it started bringing up everything that I have been shoving under the surface for three weeks. But I made it through.

Then we talked about testing. She offered to run tests on me that day, and I was shocked, but accepted immediately. I thought that we were going to have to wait for tests for a few more months, until our new insurance could go through and we could get another doctor up on our situation, so this was really great, to start testing right away and possibly get some answers and at least begin the process. I'm fairly up on the various testing that they can do, so she didn't need to explain it all, but we discussed what she could test today (a lot of things) and what I would need to ask for at my next Ob/Gyn or RE appointment (FSH and estrodiol, which have to be done on CD3 and HSG, as well as repeat Lupus antibodies and maybe something else). She is going to call me with the results of everything soon (or she said that I could call at any point this week and ask for someone to give me the results).

We also discussed my feelings about when I want to try to get pregnant again. She said that she was of the opinion that my body would get pregnant again whenever it was ready to do so, so in her opinion I didn't need to wait to try for any medical reason. However, the HSG test, which could show a physical defect in my uterus that could be causing the miscarriages and could be corrected by surgery, would be something that they could not test (or correct) while I was pregnant. So, basically, Jonathan and I need to make the decision as to whether we should just try again right away or do we want to wait for all of the testing to come through first. More than 50% of people who have repeat miscarriages never find a reason, so if we wait for three months, it may very likely end up that they will find no cause and we would have waited for no reason. On the other hand, they could find a reason and know how to correct it for the next pregnancy, so that I wouldn't have a third miscarriage. On the other other hand, these two miscarriages may have just been rotten (genetic) luck, and there may be nothing wrong with me at all, and I could put off a third pregnancy for months just to have a perfectly normal one after that. However, since I did carry longer than nine weeks this time, she felt strongly that there may be something outside of genetics going on, which really reaffirmed what I have been feeling. All that to say, we have a lot of thinking to do and a big decision to make.

After the appointment, I went downstairs to have the blood work done. My favorite, favorite girl from the lab picked up my sheet and *whoosh* a list about a mile long of blood work fell down - yikes! Thank the Lord that it was this girl (I don't know her name!) who was taking my blood, and not the woman from last Tuesday because this was eight vials worth - I cannot imagine the pain that would have come from blondie scraping my nerves and pulling the needle in and out of the vein every two seconds for as long as this took. Afterwards, my arm bleed straight through and soaked the gauze they gave me - I've never done that before!

It was a really good appointment, and I was pleased with the outcome. Now to just wait for the call!

Controlling the Changes in My Life

I get haircuts when a big change or event is happening in my life. Currently, my husband is graduating, I am leaving my job and the work force in general, we are moving across the country, and I have just had my second miscarriage.

Thus from this:
To this:(Trust me, there is a good five to six inches gone - it will look shorter when I have it curly. Not that it isn't trying to curl on its own in the second picture. Also, I stuck my orchid in that picture because I am so PROUD that it reflowered this year!)

My wedding: The following day:

I also got a cut the night that I found out Max had died, although I don't have a picture because it wasn't super drastic. I was too afraid that I would regret what I had done in my distaught state.

Anyone want to psychoanalyze that? My best guess is that I want change that I can actually control, unlike the other changes in my life.

Please leave a message after the beep.

I know I've been an awful blogger lately, but let's just chalk that up to exhaustion - mental, emotional, physical, spiritual exhaustion. I probably won't be blogging any time soon, and here's why:

Friday, June 5: hosting Jonathan's parents, Jonathan's M.Eng. graduation, packing the Uhaul, saying goodbye to our four best friends in Boston
Saturday, June 6: MOVING DAY, flying with Sophie - Her Royal Highness of Whining Who Really Loves to Whine A Lot - to DC, cleaning new apartment, starting to move into new apartment
Sunday, June 7: Finishing moving into new apartment, unpacking the essentials, hanging out with my family and Jonathan's parents
Monday-Thursday, June 8-11: Vacation to Ocean City, MD - probably no internet access
Friday, June 12-???: No internet access in our new apartment until someone installs it. This will be the time period during which Jonathan and I stare at each other in dismay and then go through withdrawal until someone gives us our fix by installing Verizon Fios (which, alas, will never, ever compare to MIT's 48 Mbps. Sigh.)

ETA: I have no clue when I'll be back. See above.

But maybe if you're really good and ask veeeeery nicely, I'll post some automatic posts to surprise you every once in a while over the next two weeks.

P.S. I really love you guys. Do you know that?
P.P.S. *BEEEEEEP*

hCG=4

I am officially not pregnant, folks.

Yahoo?

Contest winners!

Okay, unless someone wants to come forward with a picture of the 10,000 hit, then I declare Christina from A Song of Silence and Jessie from The Adventures of the McKinney Twins to be our winners. They tied with the 10,001 hit (not sure how that happened :-P). Nice job, girls!



Since I'm moving this Saturday, I'm not going to have time to shop around for a cool gift, so I decided to do $20 gift cards to their favorite stores. Just let me know, girls, where you want your gift card from! And I put the limitation on them that it can't be for groceries, it has to be something fun for themselves. :)

June blog design

What do you think?


Just a note on the background, it is not just for being pretty. :) I found this set of Photoshop brushes and knew they were perfect. They are just like my life - God is making me beautiful, just as I try to make my blog beautiful each month, but sometimes God uses thorns and tears to do so. Perfect.