I am not a crier, but yesterday I bawled—twice. I recognize that I am hormonal and exhausted, but I shocked myself at my reactions to, first, seeing triplets and, second, hearing that my friend is pregnant with twins, both of whom are boys.

I was pregnant with twin boys for almost nine weeks, yet I truly thought that I had moved past actively mourning Baby B, whom I lost in September.

From then until mid-January, when my placenta-previa-related pre-term bleeding led to bed rest, I didn’t get emotional when I babysat for 4-year-old twin boys once a week, plus drove them to and/or from school three days a week.

As a room parent, I was able to organize bowling playdates for my son’s preschool class—in which one, two or three sets of twins would participate—without losing it afterward.

Just a week and a half ago, a friend—whose post-IVF HCG numbers convinced us that two embryos had implanted—was concerned about my loss of Baby B, expressing fear that discussing her twin pregnancy might be difficult for me.

I responded, “Thanks for being sensitive about the loss of Baby B, but I’m really fine. I get sad sometimes, usually when sometime asks me if I’m pregnant with twins because I’m so big, but otherwise I’m just focusing on the little man I’m carrying. I think I’m coping because I have perspective: There are so many who never have children—or lose one late in a pregnancy, or even at birth. My loss was early, and I’m still pregnant, so I have something positive to focus on. So, hearing about you doesn’t upset me at all. You and your husband have been through hell and back and deserve all good things with this pregnancy.”

But yesterday afternoon, I took my 5-year-old son to a birthday party in which parents were invited to stay and socialize. As I sat in a cushy chair, I watched 8-month-old triplets—identical twin boys and their sister—play on the floor below me, doing tummy time, rolling around and biting on toys for two hours, without crying.

Witnessing these babies and their contentment, for they amuse and entertain each other, made me realize that I’d somehow separated the older twins, the ones I see on a regular basis, from my loss. Maybe this was my subconscious emotional-survival technique.

But the combination of seeing multiples who are babies, two of whom are boys, which is what I would have experienced, plus being sleep-deprived and hormone-fueled did me in. I walked into my house post-party, cried, then took a much-needed two-hour nap.

Then last night, I learned that my friend, who lives one block away, is pregnant with twin boys, and the death of Baby B hit me again for I had just been exposed, hours earlier, to what I will never experience as a parent.

My friend said that, when she revealed her pregnancy to her work colleagues, one was particularly affected: The woman who had lost a twin 18 years ago.

Obviously, the lesson I need to learn here is, bottom line, a mother doesn’t ever “get over” losing a child. I need to remind myself that it’s natural to mourn, that I need to stop feeling guilty as if mourning makes me selfish considering that I am still carrying a child. Being pregnant with one son doesn’t invalidate the loss of his brother. I can be thankful for what I’ve been given, while simultaneously feeling a sense of loss for what could have been.

I believe the other issue playing into my emotional instability is that I know too much to feel confident that I’ll be bringing a baby home at all. So, as I prepare for my baby’s arrival, I leave on price tags and keep items in their boxes, just in case I need to return it all.

It’s a terrible feeling, this inability to relax and enjoy nesting, as most other women do. And the loss of my little Baby B—for reasons I will never know—reinforces that there are no guarantees. I hate that there are no guarantees.

Yes, my ever-growing list of pregnancy-related ailments now includes this torture, which was confirmed by abdominal ultrasound on Thursday, the final day of my 32nd week of pregnancy. My baby, already 5 pounds 3 ounces, compared to the normal 4 ½-pound range at 33 weeks, is currently breech, so the incessant pounding at the bottom of my uterus really is from his pedaling, jabbing feet.

It literally feels like he’ll be able to kick his way out, so I’ve been worried about the damage done to my cervix, whether funneling, thinning, or dilating. But, apparently, my cervix is super-strong in this pregnancy, unlike when I was pregnant with my 5-year-old son and dilated starting at 27 weeks of pregnancy. During a trans-vaginal ultrasound, also conducted on Thursday, the technician said my cervix is still 5 cm long and closed.

The trans-vaginal ultrasound also confirmed that I still have marginal placenta previa, so Dr. E, the doctor I saw Thursday, said I will remain on partial bed rest.

I haven’t had any placental bleeding since the first day of my 26th week of pregnancy, which is phenomenal, but Dr. E said that as I get closer to my due date, I will have more and more contractions, which could jumpstart the bleeding again. Therefore, if I see any red blood, I need to travel immediately to labor and delivery, so the baby and I can be monitored.

Thankfully, at this stage of my pregnancy, the infant survival rate is at least 95%, plus my little guy has benefitted from steroids given to me during my pre-term bleeding episode, so his lungs will be mature soon, if they aren’t already.

Dr. E confirmed that, if the placenta previa condition continues, I will have to have a C-section to deliver. She said specifically that the practice will not even attempt vaginal deliveries when the placenta is within 2 cm of the cervix because of the possibility of hemorrhaging, which could be detrimental to both me and the baby. Considering that there has been little to no change since placenta previa was diagnosed during my 13-week ultrasound, 20 weeks ago, I don’t hold out much hope of it rectifying itself.

The ultrasound technician said that the fact that my baby boy is breech isn’t considered a problem until the 36th week, but if he and my placenta stay where they are, they’re conspiring for a C-section, in my opinion.

The two ultrasounds also showed that my amniotic fluid level is ideal for this stage of the pregnancy; my baby’s development, with the exception of his size, is within his age range; and, in addition to his large body, he has a big head. My 5-year-old son has an off-the-charts-size head too, but it doesn’t look out of the ordinary, and, as I tell my son, he has a big head to house his very big brain.

As of Thursday’s weigh-in, I’ve gained 60 pounds since starting to try to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization (IVF). I’m unbelievably uncomfortable, and the combination of my asthma and my reduced lung capacity is making my days and nights difficult. I have no energy, so I told Dr. E that, even if she’d told me to stop bed rest and be wild and free for the final weeks of my pregnancy, I can’t handle more than modified bed rest as it is. (Weeks ago, I was tested for anemia, which some of my readers thought could be the reason for my complete exhaustion, but no anemia here.)

I return to the Center for Maternal and Fetal Health in two weeks, the first day of my 35th week of pregnancy, for another doctor’s appointment, a non-stress test to evaluate my baby’s heart rate, and ultrasounds to check my amniotic fluid level and placenta. Starting at 36 weeks, I will have an appointment every Friday for the duration of this pregnancy.

As I become more and more comfortable with the age, size and strength of my baby boy, I am becoming more and more nervous about having a C-section. But I keep reminding myself that five years ago, as a result of two botched epidurals, I endured 17 ½ hours of hell to give birth vaginally to my 9 pound 7 ounce son. So, while an incision through my stomach and uterus won’t be fun to recover from, it might be easier than my prior childbirth experience. And either way, I know that my body will have no long-term memories of the pain, while I will have the joy of loving another child.

During my waking hours, I’m normally a considerate person. But according to my sweet husband, at night, in our shared queen-size bed, I—32 weeks pregnant and up 55 pounds—have become downright rude.

He admitted to me two weeks ago, following the night that I’d been afraid I was in pre-term labor, that he’d been up since 1 a.m. because, “You were on my side of the bed, and you’re big.”

“Why didn’t you push me back onto my side?”

Incredulous, he answered, “I thought you were in labor. I wasn’t going to touch you. Instead, I lay there for two hours, then just got up.” (This is where I need to mention that my husband’s normal wake-up time, seven days a week, is between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., so he lost out on two to two-and-a-half hours of sleep, not the multitude of hours you would expect.)

And I’m snoring—or something of the sort—every single night. At my request, he’s tried to describe it to me, even mimicking the sound effects. He says it’s not loud, and perhaps it can’t be technically classified as snoring. He can best define it as sounding as if I’m struggling to breathe.

I know from my girlfriends that their husbands snore when they’ve gained weight. So I recognize that my massive weight gain is a major contributor to my snoring, along with my allergy-related asthma, which only surfaces to the extreme when I’m pregnant. I diligently use my inhalers, apparently to no avail when I’m asleep.

I was fat and asthma-riddled when I was pregnant with my 5-year-old son, and my husband, then my boyfriend, stuck by me for the nine months of my pregnancy—a pregnancy made possible via intrauterine insemination (IUI) with anonymous donor sperm.

“Did I snore like this the last time?” I asked him yesterday. “I don’t remember you saying anything about it.”

“Well, back then, I was in love,” he said, then winked.

I know he’s still in love, because, when I’ve offered to sleep on the couch, he proclaims the idea “ridiculous.”

I know he’s still in love, because, to drown out my snoring-like sounds, he uses earplugs, so we can both get ample sleep.

And when I resort to bed-hogging, he does nothing, putting me first.

While I always appreciate my husband, reading a recent Ask Amy column in the February 24 issue of The Chicago Tribune made me pretty much worship him. When you read about the insensitive husband of this pregnant snorer, I’ll bet you’ll join me in my husband-worship too.

Expectant parents need their Z’s

Ask Amy
February 24, 2010

Dear Amy: I am 8 1/2 months pregnant with my second child. I am a stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately, my pregnancy is causing me to snore. My husband wakes me up throughout the night to tell me to stop or get me to change positions.

You could try to open this topic with him during a neutral moment by saying, “I’m sorry about the snoring. I know it’s disruptive. Can you help me think of a solution so we can both get more sleep at night, honey?”

In the past week, three of my friends have dropped off newborn baby clothes, sleep sacs, blankets, bibs and other necessities. I’ve gone from having just a few baby items, since I gave away almost all of my 5-year-old son’s, to having half of our dining room stacked with storage bins, a car seat and its two bases, a Boppy® breastfeeding pillow, and so on. And I’ve already washed and put away enough newborn to 6-month baby clothing to fill two deep dresser drawers.

Other friends have promised to give or loan me more: Still to come are a bassinet, a baby swing, a bouncer, more clothes, and who knows what other surprises.

Yet this is just a tiny part of the generosity that’s been shared with my husband, my son and me during our two in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles and subsequent high-risk pregnancy.

My friends watched my son last spring and summer while I underwent two IVF egg retrievals and embryo transfers.

Three friends loaned me maternity clothes, since I gave all of those away too.

A friend cried with me on the sidewalk between our houses when I learned, after my first ultrasound, I was likely losing one of our twin boys, Baby B.

Weeks later, when we found out that Baby B had indeed died, other friends sent e-mails letting me know they were thinking of us—and would help in any way.

When I was hospitalized in mid-January for placenta-previa-related, pre-term bleeding, five friends visited me in the hospital, bringing me goodies—lotion for my super-dry hands, trashy magazines galore, and Coke®, since I’m allowed to have a little bit of caffeine.

In the 6 ½ weeks I’ve been home on bed rest—first full and now partial—friends have brought over dinner and also checked in with me every time they go to the grocery store or Target®, then dropped off and put away my requested purchases.

Friends have come to my house to keep me company when I started to feel too isolated.

They’ve offered to drive me to and from my doctor’s appointments.

During yet-another bleeding scare, a friend took me to the hospital, then stayed with me while my uterus, cervix, baby and I were thoroughly evaluated. She was free to do this because another friend watched her kids specifically so she could be with me.

Friends have taken my son for playdates with their children, so he wouldn’t be house-bound with me too frequently.

One friend has driven my son to every Thursday morning soccer class, while she and another friend switch off hosting post-soccer play- and lunch-dates until afternoon preschool starts.

Two friends, with whom I’ve carpooled the entire school year, now handle all the driving shifts to and from preschool five afternoons a week.

Two friends organized a manicure and pedicure outing for the three of us, driving me to and from the salon.

And so many others have offered to help, from my son’s preschool teacher to acqaintences who’ve heard I’m on bed rest.

It’s been a long, hard year for my family, but our loss and stresses have been tempered by how much support and love we have from our friends.

I strongly believe that love makes a family, and our recent experiences demonstrate that, while we have a nuclear family of five (my husband, my two stepsons, ages 15 and 14, my son, age 5, and me), we are part of a much larger extended family of loyal friends.

Thank you to them all…

Today, I’m 32 weeks pregnant, the minimum goal my husband and I had hoped I’d achieve with this high-risk pregnancy. Regardless of my pre-term bleeding during my 25th week of pregnancy, my placenta previa, and my history of incompetent cervix, this baby boy of ours has stayed put for an additional 6 ½ weeks, putting his survival rate at 95%.

Personally, I think his survival rate is higher, because I was given steroid injections to advance his development 6 ½ weeks ago, when my pre-term bleeding began—and he’s big. And based on the gymnastics moves he’s performing in my belly, seemingly 24 hours a day, he’s feisty, a fighter.

I have been cursed in the fertility department, struggling with embryo implantation and suffering early pregnancy losses, due to my in utero exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES), which led to my underdeveloped, one-third-normal-size T-shaped uterus. And due to my DES deformities, my pregnancies are high-risk.

But my one prior successful pregnancy gives me comfort: When I was pregnant with my 5-year-old son, my complication was premature dilation due to incompetent cervix, which led to hospitalization, steroid injections and bed rest starting in my 27th week of pregnancy. After all that, my son was born on his due date, a rarity that occurs in only 5% of pregnancies, according to my pregnancy books, and he weighed a whopping 9 pounds 7 ounces.

My son did have to stay in neonatal intensive care (NICU) for the first five days of his life because he’d aspirated meconium (his first bowel movement, in utero), but his size and corresponding strength helped him overcome being born in acute respiratory distress.

The nurses told me that he was the biggest baby they’d ever had in NICU. And while there were strict rules not to look at the other NICU babies, the day my son was being released, the dad of a 4-pound twin, who also was being released that day, walked over and admitted, “I looked at your baby last night.” He continued, “That’s what a baby’s supposed to look like.”

If the little man inside of me is anything like his older brother, he will overcome whatever is thrown at him from this point on, because he’s also had the benefit of the steroids, and he’s also big for his gestational age.

So, today, for the first time in my seven months of pregnancy, I’m permitting myself to feel confident that, between now and my due date of April 23, my husband and I will be bringing our healthy, huge baby boy home.

I know there are no guarantees. Even at full-term, a 100% infant survival rate doesn’t exist.

But for today I’m allowing myself the luxury of feeling like my dream of having another biological child will come true. I’m still realistic. I’m still scared. But I’ve hit a milestone so significant that the tears in my eyes right now are not sad ones, but ones of hope and happiness.

Tonight, as my 5-year-old son and I talked before he fell asleep, I asked him if his classmate Charlie’s mom has had her baby yet.

“No, but today’s the due date,” he said, with the authority of an adult.

He then announced, “I don’t like babies in bellies. They don’t play with anybody. They’re just inside, alone.”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

He continued, “I bet they want to come out to discover grown-ups.”

He paused, then asked, “Do you know what the word ‘discover’ means?”

“Yes.”

“It means babies want to stare at grown-ups with their eyes. Is that what ‘discover’ means?” he asked, questioning himself.

“Yes. Discovering means learning about something, and we can discover by seeing, by hearing, by touching. There are lots of ways to learn about something, including staring.”

“I bet our baby will want to see our house—because it’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking full credit for the beauty of our home.

“Except for the holes,” he stated. Our house was built in 1927 and has several holes, primarily in corners, near the floor. “The holes aren’t beautiful; they’re dark. I’m afraid of the dark.”

“Yes, our house is old, so it does have some holes.”

Completely changing the subject, he said, “The baby might want to sleep with us.” Then he asked, “When is the baby coming?”

“Our baby or Charlie’s?”

“Ours.”

“Well, he’s due in two months.”

“Two poopy months?”

“No, two diarrhea months,” I deadpanned.

Unable to stop giggling, he struggled to ask, “Two diarrhea months? Did you say that to make me laugh?”

“Yes, potty mouth. Yes, I did.”

Little boys and their potty mouths… Growing up with four younger brothers and now serving as stepmom to two teenage boys and mom to a 5-year-old son, I’ve had to adapt. Soon—in two poopy and/or diarrhea months or less—I’ll have another son with the potential to be a potty mouth, but I’ve learned to appreciate boyness. So I can’t wait.

And neither can my 5-year-old son. Babies in bellies are boring…

I’ve long heard that, as women age, they have to make a decision: face vs. ass. Via an Internet search, I just learned that this age-related dilemma was first vocalized by Mae West in the 1930s. The theory is that women have to choose whether to (1) be thin, resulting in a nice ass, but gaunt, older-than-their-age face, or (2) gain some weight, giving them a perhaps-too-ample derriere, but filled-out, less-wrinkled, younger-looking facial features.

Having gained 55 pounds in the past 11 months due to infertility medications, emotional eating, pregnancy and six weeks of bed rest, my ass is super-sized. I’m on track to be the largest I’ve ever been: I’m only seven pounds less than when I gave birth to my son, on his due date, five years ago—and I have two months of pregnancy to go.

This weight gain, complemented by very unflattering pregnancy symptoms, has me feeling unattractive because I am unattractive at this point. But throughout this tough, high-risk pregnancy, I naively thought I had one thing going for me—a younger-than-my-age face.

Earlier in my pregnancy, when acquaintances would ask how I was feeling, I would be honest about the differences between being pregnant at 36 versus 41. And many of them would exclaim, “Forty-one? You look so much younger!”

And I was holding on to this, sad to say, because every other physical asset is long gone.

Then tonight, as my son—who started reading on his fifth birthday two weeks ago—was reading to me before bed, he stopped short and said, “I don’t have any wrinkles on my head.”

Not seeing any link between this question and the text in his reader, which was along the lines of “Dan has a bat. Dan can tap, tap, tap the bat,” and so on, I simply answered, “No, you don’t.”

“Did you do this a lot?” he asked, scrunching up his face and forehead.

“Why?”

“Because you have a lot of wrinkles on your head.”

At this point, I asked him which character pictured on the pages had wrinkles on his/her forehead—the racoon, the cat, the kangaroo?

“None of them,” he said.

Apparently, my forehead is so wrinkled that it stirred him out of his reading revelry, leaving him no choice but to comment on it.

Now, I’m not a Botox® kind of girl, but, even if I were, I assume it wouldn’t be safe to have botulinum injected into the forehead of my pregnant body.

So I need to start strategically styling my bangs. Or wearing forehead-covering hats. Because after my son is born, I will lose this weight, improving the appearance of my ass. But if my face looks wrinkly when I’m at my all-time largest, it will look even older as I slim down.

Looks like my only choice is my ass…

I’m not feeling well enough to write a post today, so I will just forward you to an article, published today on momlogic.com, that features interviews with women who have suffered through infertility, including me.

To read “When Getting Pregnant Doesn’t Come Naturally,” written by Ronda Kaysen, click on:
http://www.momlogic.com/2010/02/when_getting_pregnant_doesnt_come_naturally_inferitlity.php

I regularly check my family’s Aetna medical insurance online account to match claims with the corresponding invoices to ensure accuracy. In November, I saw several claims for my husband, for medical appointments and tests that had taken place in September and October, which he’d never mentioned to me.

Staring at the computer screen, I started having a panic attack, because I could only come up with two scenarios for my husband undergoing medical testing without confiding in me: (1) something potentially serious, even deadly, was wrong with him, but he’d been trying to protect me until he knew his exact diagnosis or (2) he was going to hide his for-sure-deadly diagnosis from me for the duration of my high-risk pregnancy, to protect our surviving twin and me from additional stress.

I printed off his claims summary and, without freaking out, of which I’m tremendously proud, asked him about the appointments. He said he was healthy, he’d not been secretly seeing doctors, and he hadn’t even had routine appointments on the associated dates.

Knowing that my sweet husband might try to protect me, but wouldn’t outright lie to me, I cross-checked the dates with my calendar and realized that every single claim was for one of my appointments with the Center for Maternal and Fetal Health, my high-risk pregnancy practice.

So I printed off the complete summary of my husband’s Aetna claims, identifying each of my appointments that had incorrectly been submitted in his name. When I handed the claims summary to the receptionist at the Center for Maternal and Fetal Health before my appointment the following week, she assured me that she would pass it on to the billing powers-that-be.

I never received a phone call, asking for additional information, so I assumed the filing errors had been rectified. And from Thanksgiving to Christmas, I was in crazed organizing and jewelry-making modes, so I didn’t check our Aetna online account.

But then I received a bill, correctly identifying me as the patient, stating that I owed our 20% out-of-pocket portion of the cost of two November procedures. But I’d hit my $2,500 Aetna individual out-of-pocket maximum for the year in August, before my first appointment with the Center for Maternal and Fetal Health. Once I’d reached that maximum, Aetna started providing coverage at 100% for the remainder of the year, so I knew I shouldn’t be receiving a bill for any outstanding amount for 2009.

More on this tomorrow. Too tired to continue thinking and typing…

Fear is the inevitable side effect of my experiences with infertility, embryo implantation failures, a miscarriage, a vanishing twin and yet-another high-risk pregnancy. My fear is rational, based on hard facts; therefore, it makes me unable to wholeheartedly celebrate my pregnancy and the surviving twin boy I’m carrying inside me. Because, even now, at 31 weeks in utero, my son isn’t guaranteed a life, nor are my husband and I guaranteed a sweet baby boy to parent.

Day after day I make a conscious choice not to let my anxiety overwhelm me. And that’s difficult for me, because I’m a Type A woman, diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I’m a natural worrier.

So I take Prozac. I have weekly sessions with my psychiatrist, now by phone because I’m on bed rest. My husband, who’s Type A too, and I have weekly or biweekly appointments with a Family Systems Therapist, who now comes to our home due to my bed rest.

And I have made the decision to not ruin my pregnancy by obsessing about outcomes that may never occur. I am aware of all potential complications so I’ll recognize any symptoms of them. I am perhaps overeducated about every aspect of my high-risk pregnancy, so, if and when a problem arises, I will be prepared. But, in the meantime, I am living the cliché of “taking things one day at a time,” which has worked well for me.

But, with less than nine weeks until my due date, I feel compelled to start preparing for my son’s birth because, as part of my Type A-ness, I’m a planner. While I have the big-ticket items—the crib, the glider, the stroller—left over from my son, now 5, I gave away everything else, including almost all of his first-year clothes, to friends, because, at the time, my husband and I weren’t planning to have another child.

I’ve e-mailed the friend to whom I gave my son’s clothes to see if I can have them back, since she won’t be needing boy clothes for her newborn daughter. Several other friends have promised to look through their storage boxes to see if they still have the items I passed on. And others still have offered to give or loan me everything from clothing to a car seat with two bases.

But nothing for a newborn has arrived yet. This is, of course, normal, considering that I’m not due until April 23, two months from now. But, being a planner, I can’t stand the possibility of not being ready if my son is born before his due date, which is likely.

As a result, last week, my husband drove me, now on partial bed rest, to the discount retailer Marshalls®, so I could buy some newborn clothes. I explained to him that I won’t take off any of the tags, in case, after my friends come through, I don’t need the clothing. But, the unspoken truth is that I also won’t take off the tags in case we end up without a baby to bring home.

It makes me feel better to have these teeny-tiny outfits in hand, but it took me an entire week to actually go though the Marshalls bag in order to put these maybe-unneeded clothes away. Because I can’t oooh and aaaah at how cute they all are. I can’t blissfully prepare the baby side of my 5-year-old son’s bedroom.

I’m not that naïve. Oh, how I wish I were…