panic button

I just realized with a rising sense of panic that the transcripts I’ll be submitting with grant applications in November will have two incompletes on them – unless I can finish the work left over from last spring and V’s early arrival within the next couple weeks.

I’m swamped, people.  I may be AWOL for awhile here, but I’ll try to keep an eye on you all.

Love, E

retrospective

I was looking through my archives today, for no real reason and with a pile of other things I need to do more urgently – but realized the obvious: I used to write a lot more than I do now.  It was kind of cool to see all those words that I put out there, catch an old narrative thread, glimpse the algorhythms of hope and sadness. 

Right now, I can’t think of anything to write about that isn’t a) trite and commonplace, b) totally Critter-centric, or c) complaining.  Although I complained a whole bunch today on my other blog.

Well, here: a couple thoughts wrested from comments I made this week on other people’s blog posts.

1) Mel wrote about how badly the press handles celebribump news , and I wrote a comment in response that was eaten by the WWW and is now forever lost.  Anyway, it was just a rant about the cover story on US weekly a month or two back, on Brangelina – “IT WAS IVF!”  What bothered me most in the reporting was the quotes from an unnamed source “close to the couple,” saying that they had done IVF because it was “easier” than TTC naturally.  They were impatient and wanted to “knock it out.”  First of all, how in the world is IVF either easy or convenient?  I didn’t check out the success rates they cited, but really.  I was more or less incensed.  It made it seem like people who do IVF are selfish and impatient.

2) I applauded Dr. Grumbles on speaking out about IF etc. to her students.  It’s still really hard for me to cop to our struggles to conceive.  Even when someone else opens the door to a confessional by talking about their own struggles.  The other day I had little V. with me at a meeting, and while we were hanging out waiting for the formal part to begin another woman started talking about conceiving her first.  She reminisced that she’d had a couple drinks with a friend for the first time in two years, and found out later she was pg at the time.  The second was conceived easily.  I forced myself to mention that it had taken us a while to conceive as well.  We exchanged one glance of mutual understanding before our professor/mentor chimed in that isn’t that just how it goes, when you least expect it/stop trying/relax is when you conceive.

Hah. 

I didn’t correct her. 

We conceived on the cycle that we tried the hardest.

So, I wasn’t going to complain, but there you have it.  On a happier note, I recently survived another weekend with my in-laws, and this time I didn’t once experience the acute desire to jump out of the moving car or drive a knitting needle through my eye.  Progress!  🙂

another anniversary

Today (or possibly tomorrow) is the anniversary of V’s conception.  I wish I could think of something profound to say about it – but I feel like I’ve sort of exhausted the potential for profound ruminations about this year vs. last year.  I did finally have my post-partum check-up, though – nearly 4 months after the fact.  I asked the doc about trying for #2, about chances of a VBAC, about chances of hypertension again (which he put at something like 15%), and about the fibroid that they’d found.  He didn’t even remember the fibroid – had to look it up.  He said that it was actually smallish, only about 2 cm across, and the location of it was the least problematic.  For all the rest of it, there are mathematical probabilities but it’s basically another big fat unknown.

On the other hand, I’ve lost 3 lbs. 

Something concretely measurable.

Mary and Martha

Tara had a great reference today to Mary and Martha, how it’s hard to be both at the same time.  Wow did that resonate with me.  I’m still contemplating it.  Right now baby is sleeping on my chest while I try to answer e-mails and work on my course, which met for the first time today.  When I walked away from the apartment where she was still sleeping beautifully this morning, the tug and pull at my heart took me by surprise.  It’s not the first time I’ve left her in someone else’s care for a short time, but I guess this was the longest stretch so far – four hours.  I felt kind of like Lyra in the Golden Compass moving away from her daemon.  I walked across campus feeling like part of my body was missing. 

Otherwise, the day went well.  This afternoon I was able to read while she kicked around on a blanket, nursed, slept, etc. – not as much as I’m used to being able to, but enough that I felt like this semester MAY be do-able.

But it will take discipline, and it will take figuring out.  I feel like we’re slowly getting there.  Slowly.