“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” - Jules Renard

Wow, did I say I would write once a week? I think that is probably, weekly-ish. Nonetheless, here I am, 30ish weeks pregnant. I can't believe how fast time is flying. I can't believe how soon our house will have an actual baby in it once again. I can't wait to meet him and name him and thereissomuchtowritehere.

One of those things is, of course, introduce him to books. I'd be remiss to not mention the sadness I felt at the recent death of children's author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak. His pictures and his plots were often unsettling. Well, life is unsettling isn't it? I'm grateful that like he did, I found writing, which has been my own coping mechanism through much. And, I loved this quote of his that I saw recently. When asked about e-books, he said: "I hate them. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book. A book is a book is a book."

In all honesty, I have been doing less electronically on purpose. I have carpal tunnel and in pregnancy it turns nasty. This time, I'm not trying to get through grad school, thankfully, but I am trying to work as much as I can, so we can save for me to take some small amount of time off with baby #2. And I've been trying to write, submit and re-work my manuscript in my free time.

I keep saying I will write after he's born, after the pins and needles subside, and I wonder how I can even lie to myself like that... I mean, I can't wait for the business of tending to the first weeks and months of a baby's life: this baby, my baby, our baby. Life. But I remember writing very little in the first months of Ben's life. Like with so many other things, I'll leave it with "we shall see."

I've been organizing baby stuff and we got Ben a "big boy bed," which he loves, but for the first nap with it here yesterday, there was no rest for the weary, large mother. He's always wanted out of nap time and it took him seconds to realize that was no problem at all with a bed. I managed to get us both in a reclining position for a bit, reading books, of course! 

And there was another ultrasound due to the whole advanced maternal age/question of placental functioning. Baby looks great and, not that it was one of those strange 4D ultrasounds, but I swear I saw his face that way. Right there, staring right at this mama, smiling. Every pin and needle in my right hand or left hand is worth it. I've said this before in a guest post elsewhere, but it bears repeating for myself - Motherhood is tough and demanding, and often leaves me yearning for more time with the muse. But, I'm grateful for every moment I don't spend writing as well as every moment that I do.

Have I mentioned The Rumpus? You should go there now and read this, this, and definitely this.

"Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air." - Carl Sandburg

Well now it's really been ages since I last posted. And I feel like it's time to commit to writing more often or accept that I really am not succeeding as merely a fledgling blogger. So, I’m planning to post once a week.

Since I last posted, I have done the following:

1. Celebrated Easter - convincing C to go to the Unitarian Church that morning, taking advantage of the fact that his parents were here for the weekend and don't go to church (=babysitter). Later, we all met up with my Catholic Church going family and Jewish aunt at my mom's for lovely dinner.

2. As planned for in prior post, came to let go of some anger.     

3. Lamented over the fact that I cannot spend more time writing. 

4. Answered the question about what I do for work at least twice, spelling out the details of what I do to make money.  (Completely legal, somewhat stimulating, and involving great co-workers, albeit very un-poetic.)  

5. Randomly became very angry again, realizing that 35th birthday was not celebrated. Rather, it was spent preparing for unplanned abortion ("the procedure").

6. Wrote "writer" next to "occupation?" on form at doctor's office. 

7. Questioned the amount of energy I put into some of my relationships.

8. Became angry again.

9. Counted every blessing; considered fact that every day with Ben is a poem.

10. Attended Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

11. Decided that I may need to have a serious affair with my writing if it is really going to happen; spent one night in seedy motel consummating this relationship.  

12. Wrote a guest blog on how writing makes me a better mother and saner human.

13. Visited wonderful but expensive therapist. Reveled in the fact that my deductible is almost met, hence crappy insurance company will begin covering at 70%.

14. Questioned the amount of energy put in to some family relationships, and whether my energy actually matters.

15. Marveled at the amazing being growing in my belly; imagined birthing, nursing and being with new being.

16. See number 3. 

17. Thought about names for new baby. 

18. Felt terribly sad for the number of children missing, suffering or dying. 

19. Felt terribly angry at the number of children who are mistreated. 

20. Counted my blessings. 

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul." -Pablo Neruda

It has been a while since my last post and in pregnancy days I think it's longer. 

And it's been a bit of a dark time, though the weather here over the past weeks has been unseasonably warm and glorious. My two and a half year old reminds me daily how glorious this life is and it is so wonderful to love him. Motherhood is truly a gift.

We have now passed what was the original due date of our daughter. It's been emotional in a way that's hard to describe. As emotional as that has been, I have been feeling this baby inside me moving a lot more. It's as if he's reminding me to get out of the funk; to celebrate life. 

Though I've been writing, it has seemed impossible to write a poem in months. I'd been conditioned to spending time every day at least attempting to write or revise something. I'm glad to say I am finally back at this and like any writer, know I just need to make the time. 

Last week, my son and I went to the beach. We didn't really go to the beach. We went and had a picnic on the sea wall. It was lovely to spend some moments with him there, watching and listening to the waves. I realized I had not been to the ocean since last summer and it was extremely healing for me. Because I was pregnant with baby girl last summer, she got to spend much of her time in my womb at the beach and in the waves. If you can't tell, I love the beach. 

I'd been feeling the need to get back to the ocean and I know it will always be a place I shared with her. It is not only a place I will always enjoy going with my family as I did with my own mom, but it will also be a place I go to remember and honor the little life we didn't get to meet.  It will be our place "between the shadow and the soul."

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life." -Virginia Woolf

Today my husband and I began the process of sorting through Ben's baby stuff and thinking about where all this stuff, and more, will actually go. *

Everything's been getting piled up in the room under the stairs. Sounds ominous, doesn't it? Really it is the room where our oil tank and hot water heater live, and the place with a small area that became the catch-all storage spot for mounds of quickly outgrown/no-longer-needed baby stuff. A lot was passed on to us and we've since passed it on, but we saved some things - those things given to us and some that we purchased - I remember thinking as I piled them away how we'd give them away when we had a girl but they would be cute should we have another boy.  

I would have thought that that box with items from my desk at my last job would have been in the garage with most of our other stuff. And I think this is why I'm already feeling the urge to nest. Ben was born 3 weeks and 1 day early, in September of 2009, almost 2 weeks before we moved to this house, so while I'm sure we wouldn't have really been moved in, our plan was that he would arrive after the point of packing/passing papers/moving/some unpacking. Instead we somehow did it with help and our 10 day old, "late pre-term" baby. Since then, we've been  just sort of unpacking what we've needed and moving in slowly. What's in place is what's in place. The rest is in the garage or under the stairs.

It was perfect - that time, that September, with its many visits to the pediatrician's office and lactation consultants. We often, when visiting friends, drive by the spot where we lived, where we all spent those days together--Ben and I camped out in our room--the last of many years for me and my husband being loaded quickly into boxes by our own moms in the rooms surrounding. C doing whatever he could to help wherever at all times. I think about the music we played, what we always seemed to hear in the car as we drove to appointments in that unseasonably warm September. I remember spending what was the last of 8 or 9 birthdays there, turning 33, eating pizza among boxes with my sweet new baby a week after his birth.

And while the last almost 2 and a half years have been anything but organized, I love that that each day we've inhabited this place, it has been a life as the 3 of us. It will always be one of the things that only we and Ben shared, like the smell of his first days. It will be just one of the things that I feel very grateful for.   

* This ultimately means the work-at-home/writer/mama may (likely, will) lose her office/working writing space with door that closes and room for bookshelves. Ahhh well...

"The living moment is everything." -D.H. Lawrence

Just two days ago, we had the big 18 week ultrasound, where the baby is now large enough to see all of the anatomy, etc (sort of*). This time, after the technician did her initial scan, the doctor walked in to look a bit more. 

(*I think since I'd eaten a banana on the way over, baby was jumpy, making it a little more difficult in general. We have to go back in a month.) 

This time when the doctor walked in, he joked with us, "We stick needles in you and you keep coming back." Yes, thankfully, I'm thinking. But of course, each time I see him, I think of the first day we met. 

He is of course, the same fetal medicine specialist that detected large abnormalities in our last pregnancy. He's the doctor that said "This is just a screening," trying to calm me down as tears streamed sort of sideways down my face toward my ears. My head, still lying on the white paper that covers those tables in medical facilities, shook back and forth. As if refusing to get up and shaking my head was going to change what he had seen or what was coming next. I had known,I think from the day before I peed on a pregnancy test, that something was gravely wrong within me. Intuition is a bitch sometimes.

But the doctor. He is amazing, kind and not interested in treating patients like they are stupid just because he is brilliant. He suggested we meet with J, the genetic counselor, who is now more like a friend than a medical interface. She's sort of an oasis in a system that seems to have only dealt with normal.

I feel grateful that we were in the hands of these people, who did not encourage us to have an abortion, but provided all of the testing and then all of the facts, answers to every question, and between all of that, a shitload of tissues and some glasses of water.

I started this pregnancy differently. I don't want to jump around here, but it is inevitable. I couldn't go back to the same midwife/OB practice, for a number of reasons, some which must be obvious. Therefore I was referred elsewhere for my first ultrasound and screening.I thought it would be great to just do everything differently. Wrong. I was completely traumatized by our first visit to this other ultrasound place, where after the technician told me things looked good, the measurement was normal, I told her what had happened with our last pregnancy. She brought in a doctor to take a look, failing to give her the details in the meantime. After we had to re-tell that doctor what had happened, she then (I believe) exaggerated what she was seeing to be sure (I believe) her butt was covered. 

That is what brought us back to J and Dr. Amazing. I am going to skip some details here and I'm pretty sure that's ok with you.

Back to this most recent ultrasound. We've obviously had more of them than would occur in a normal pregnancy. These things have become like mini visits with the little one inside of me. I honestly treasure the moments because I know what it is like for plans to change quickly.  

I wave to him on the screen and cry with emotion. It's not the baby I was supposed to be looking at. (She would have been born by now.)  But it is the baby I'm thinking about naming. The moment is truly everything. Living.

After I get past this moment, I start asking way too many questions. "Are you seeing the four chambers of the heart? What is that there? Where is the placenta? I didn't have the AFP test; can you be sure the neural tube is right? What about the palate? You said the lips and nose look good but can you see his palate? That is the umbilical cord, not the intestines, right?" 

Truth is, I know more about fetal medicine than I would like. I would have loved to be one of those moms just heading in to get some pictures and maybe find out the sex of the baby. But that's ok. And I can't wait for Ben to meet him. Ben's definitely aware there's a baby coming. He keeps saying "sister," but when I tell him it's a brother, he says he'll show him the beach and how to shoot the ball in the hoop. I'm sure we'll all be just fine.  

The technician printed a picture of the feet. I can't wait to tickle those toes.   

"Ritual is necessary for us to know anything." - Ken Kesey

Back acne and bloody noses. Things that don’t happen normally in my non pregnant self that seem to be part of the daily life of my pregnant body. But there are rituals to cope with them, right? This might be TMI and for that I apologize. Let’s not get further into the details.  

I have been thinking a lot about rituals lately. Last week, Valentine’s day. Yesterday, Ash Wednesday. Before that, Fat Tuesday. Between them all, Sunday. 

Sundays were full of rituals when I was a kid. Church, and all of the rituals that go with that, followed by Sunday school, followed by visits with family, my brother and I playing Connect Four and the sound of water boiling for pasta.

I think Whitney Houston’s funeral this weekend really got me thinking about this. A parent lost a child. Losing a child of any age is unimaginable to me. But I have lost a child I didn’t meet. Didn’t hold. Didn’t kiss goodnight. Didn’t feed. Didn’t know.  Didn't have a birthday party for.

There are very few religions or cultures with the rituals to handle the loss of an unborn or stillborn child. Forget rituals, most of us don’t even have the words to deal with this. The child  in my belly will be loved and cherished. But I know he wouldn’t want to be a replacement for her, nor could he be considered as such.

She will not be forgotten. She lives deep within my soul. But I struggle with how I might memorialize that. Few people knew she existed. I’m angry about it. And I realize my need to talk about this is normal (thank you, expensive but wonderful therapist.) I have this urge to tell people about her. While I keep trying to simply stop after sharing my good news. It goes something like this:

Me: “I’m pregnant!”

Person: “Great news! When are you due? Do you know if it is a boy or a girl, or will you find out?”

Me: “It’s a boy. I shouldn’t know that yet but I do, because of all this genetic testing we’ve had. His chromosomes have been counted. See, I was also pregnant last year, with a girl…”

You can imagine how it goes from there. I tell the friend/family member/colleague how chances are, she wouldn’t have made it to birth and if she did, she would have been fed with tubes and I may not have held her, I would have spent every hour saying good-bye, and how she may have been on the earth for only hours or days. Perhaps months, likely not a whole year. I know these are statistics and I think every day how she may not have been one of them. I will think about it forever. Perhaps she would have lived until two or five. But she wouldn’t have lived. She would have suffered. None of us would have been living.  

I tell the friend/family member/colleague that I know I made the best choice I could have with the information I had. I know I made the best choice for my family and for my mental health (we can talk about this later). And I know I made the choice that my husband and I made together, after talking, asking, talking, meditating, and crying. And I tell them I am thankful that I had that choice to make. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the response and love I have received from those that I have shared this with.

I hope that, regardless of politics and religion, we may find a way to honor the presence of these babies. Not all unborn babies are unwanted.

Yesterday was the start of Lent. I’ve not been a practicing Catholic in some time and do not typically “give up” something for Lent. But this year, I have decided I will spend this time “letting go.” I’m going to let go of my anger, without letting go of her presence. 

And I’m going to write, because that is the only ritual I have ever really found solace in. I will write her a letter every day if I have to. I will write about how I pictured her, about all the things I wanted to show her, teach her and share with her. I will write to her about ice cream and the color purple (my favorite). I will write her stories and poems. I am going through my own ritual of learning to push forward. And I know that when I hold this baby boy in July, a part of her will be there in him. 

If you’re reading this, thank you, for being part of this ritual. 

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.” - Anne Sexton

I have so much to be happy about and grateful for. But, I just have to say that right now, this space is about more than expecting a second child.

One night last week, laying and unsleeping, I thought I should get out of bed and knit. Some people would be knitting. Knitting would be the perfect activity for insomniac pregnant woman on the nightmorning before she hopes to hear the heartbeat growing inside her.

Except that, once the doctor, under ultrasonic guidance, establishes the portal to the placenta and for for the second time, you see the what seems like a foot long needle (maybe it is?) enter, exit, enter and at last finally exit with the sacred liquid meant to be shared by mother and baby interrupted by science and squirted into second tube and sent to lab again, there’s no knitting.

The next day, we heard the heartbeat of our third child. 

I guess that right now, this is very much about our second child. About her brief presence in our lives and the loss we couldn't have planned to expect.