Lazy Sunday

Since my weekend was so action-packed, I decided (well, my body decided for me) to rest and relax today. I have had a LOT of low back pain. It actually kept me up most of last night. I finally put some heat on it, which was great. I am taking a tincture of black haw, false unicorn, and wild yam to help tone the uterus and keep me from miscarrying. I am still afraid of that. Sigh.

My only activity today was going to my Yoga Yoga Teacher Training meeting. Great things are happening at YYTT. I looked around the room at my funny, smiling, sarcastic, dedicated colleagues and I realized, once again, how blessed I am and how much I love teaching yoga. I especially love teaching those who want to become teachers themselves. I have come to realize this is a calling for me. Well. So be it! And they couldn't be more supportive of my pregnancy. I will probably take next Fall off, and hopefully be able to start teaching again in January 2008. I have no idea how life will unfold...

I indulged my Sonic jones for vanilla malteds and tater tots again today. Then I ate a salad to balance it out.

All is well with the butterbean. I am going to bed early (well, soon) to try to have a normal night of sleep.

Midnight Special

I just got home from my weekend workshop in Houston (actually it was Friendswood/Pearland) studying with my beloved yoga teacher, Mary, who moved from Austin all the way to Boston last summer. My love for Mary runs deep; she was my yoga teacher for several years. I made myself her devotee, her apprentice. I believe that her understanding of yoga and yoga philosophy not only transcends the world of yoga we live in today, but that she embodies the concepts of truth, wisdom, and courage. She and her spiritual mentor, Buddha, a Catholic priest, officiated our wedding. Anyway. The last time I visited with her she told me she was never going to teach yoga again, which made me feel so sad, not just for me but for the rest of the world. She is truly gifted.

Her workshop this weekend was on the Bhagavad Gita, a document so near and dear to my own heart, thanks to her introducing it to me several years ago. The name translates from Sanskrit to English as "Song of God." It is considered the jewel of Hindu literature and sacred text, and was written some time before the Common Era. It contains the first mentions of yoga in all the relgious canons. It describes the different paths of yoga, and how yoga is a process and how to live with true meaning and purpose. It is said to be the only book Henry David Thoreau brought with him to Walden Pond, and Robert Oppenheimer quoted from it when he witnessed the first atomic bomb go off. I love reading and teaching it. It is so relevant to my own life.

Anyway.

To have Mary teach a workshop on it was really a rare and special treat, and I wasn't going to miss it no matter how bad I felt. I am still nauseated most of the time, very tired, and have that damn yellow discharge. I managed to squeeze in a doctor visit on Friday, peed in a cup on my way out of town, and he is supposed to give me test results Monday. He didn't seem alarmed, but I am so worried about every little thing. Especially since my low back/sacrum hurts so very much.

I ate really well on the trip, was only a little stiff from being cooped up in the car -- I rode with three other friends and we had a great time -- slept six hours (!!!) instead of two to four, and practiced very sweetly this morning from 9 am to noon. I have given myself permission to use props and support for every single pose if I want to. I am really learning so much about modifying and accomodating for the baby in my belly. I haven't done a backbend since January. And no handstands or headstands. Lots of standing poses with the chair, and stuff at the wall like chaturanga and bujangasana.

I will write more later on the themes of the workshop; it was really deep and thought-provoking. Now, since I didn't nap at all today, I should be hitting the sack.

Tomorrow (today, since it is just after midnight) I plan to lounge and laze all day.

Good Friday

I had a crazy vivid dream last night that I accidentally cut off all of my superlong, luxurious hair. But the cut was really cute! It was a blunt cut right above my shoulders.

I'm thinking of letting all the black dye grow out, and just let my long grey wavy freak flag hair fly! I want to see the faces on people in the grocery store when they notice this grey haired lady has a big baby belly! I want to see it on myself.

We'll see if I can hold out.

So I'm off to teach my class, then off to Houston for a workshop with my great teacher whom I miss sooo much, Mary.

Let's pray the food stash I've packed will be enough.

I'm a survivor

Well, I made it through the rest of my day without incident. For those of you who really want to know, I've had a yellow discharge for several weeks now. I don't think it's a UTI. It could possibly be from the Unisom/B6 combo, or my prenatal vites. It sort of fades in and out. Gets darker, lighter, disappears. There is no pattern to it. Should I drink more water? I told my nurse about it today and she said if I started experiencing pain or burning or lack of pee-pee, I should come in. I may go in anyway, just to rule everything it could be OUT.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready for my trip to Houston for the workshop.

I'm already thinking about throwing a big party for my birthday, an "Amateur Night" so all my talented friends can show up and perform!

I think I missed the Democratic debate tonight. We watched Survivor. It's Andrew's addiction. I blame him. Is there any reason why I shouldn't want Hillary for president? Or Barack?

Some of the books I've read on pregnancy suggest taking a media break. I wish I could. I think this baby is going to be an investigative journalist, though, because I can't stop reading, listening to, and watching the news. I've tried. It's like the baby wants to know. What if it's the reincarnation of Molly Ivins?

Please, feel free to leave comments.

Cosmic Cafe

It's so gloriously beautiful outside today. It's such a shame and a pity that I feel so darn lousy.

I had one thing on my calendar today: meet friend Suzee for lunch. At Cosmic Cafe, the peaceful vegetarian Indian restaurant in Clarksville, a place I really enjoy.

I felt great when I woke up, thinking "This is it! The day the nausea goes away!" (And yet of course neurotically thinking I was no longer pregnant if no longer nauseated.) Not to worry; the sickness came back just an hour before I needed to leave to meet Suzee. I had to stop at (had to) Sonic to get a malted and some tots, en route to Cosmic.

Hey, whatever it takes.

I also need to get ready to leave for the weekend. My spiritual teacher, Mary, is going to be in Houston tomorrow and Saturday for a workshop that I won't miss! I'm going to be driving down to H-town with some yoga buddies. I believe they will be sympathetic to my urinary needs and willingly stop the car when nature calls. I need to stock up on snackage so I don't get stranded in the middle of a yoga studio with nothing to eat. I used to practically starve myself all day, since you really should practice yoga on an empty stomach, and I would practice off and on all day. Not so now. I drink water, go to the bathroom, eat like a horse and sit on pillows in the back if I need to. And do the occasional postures or take notes.

So now I'm going to NAP. My favorite activity of all.

Yoga Rocked My World Today, Along with the Sun

I will try to post as often as possible so that those of you who are curious about my condition can check here rather than make the dreaded phone call or email: "Is everything okay?" But I warn you: this may be redundant, trite, and well, even a little boring to anyone but me.

I taught yoga today at noon and at six, with a nice visit with my fabulous therapist Gail in between. I managed to wolf down a veggie burrito between class and Gail, catch 30 minutes of Judge Judy, nap for 30 minutes, and purchase my obligatory Starbuck's (evil corporation, I know) tangerine juice blended before class.

I don't know if I would survive teaching my classes if it weren't for those juice blended things. And you know what? THEY'RE DISCONTINUING THEM. I really ought to write a letter. They are the only not-too-sweet Starsucks item I can stomach right now. They're the perfect blend (I said it) between smoothie and tea. And there's no dairy involved. Sigh. Hopefully they'll wait to discontinue them after I'm already feeling more better. (Soon, God, please, sooooon....)

I felt so happy today. The sun was out, I had a sweet practice in the morning, and the nausea was kept to a dull roar thanks to juice blendeds and Unisom and B6. Screw ginger. Sorry, but I ate so much ginger and drank so much ginger tea my first nine weeks of pregnancy I never want to see it again.

After class I was starting to poop out -- speaking of poop, my poops have generally been fantastic during this pregnancy! -- so I asked Andrew to make dinner while I lounged around and watched 3 seconds of Notes from the Underbelly and waited anxiously for Lost. I guess Notes is supposed to be funny, and it kind of is, but I can't relate to perky, upflip hairdo twenty-somethings getting all bent out of shape because they haven't had sex with their husbands in 24 days due to morning sickness. Perhaps it will warm my cold, cold heart. Many bad television shows seem to do that these days. If I'm home during the day, I even watch the frickin' Learnin' Channel's Baby Block. Once again, however, I am not seeing myself represented in the media. Where are the old broads? Where are the old broads who having their FIRST baby who are also health nut, non-chick-lit-lovin' yet progressive, non-knitting (sorry, nothing against it, I just don't) feminist, sassy, hardcore yogi poet types? Bring them on!

And then we watched Lost, which I still love. My husband does a pretty funny imitation of Juliet, whose lips are permanently pursed.

Now I'm doing this, and then I'm going to try to read myself to sleep with something by Steven Saylor, about ancient Rome.

And now you know all of my guilty pleasures....except wait! I hope Blake wins American Idol.

Soon I will post a list of preggers mom blogs I like to read.

Catch Up With Me

Okay. I think this will mostly be for my friends and family, though I'd like to offer it out there in the blogosphere of pregnant ladies looking for like minds and like hearts. So I'll have to tread the line somewhere in between.

So, fade back in time with me, if you will.

The year is 2005. Mid-summer to early fall. My husband and I were trying to conceive the good ol' fashioned way for about six months when my gyno said, "Perhaps you should go ahead and go to the fertility specialist." Long story short, we did that, and at every turn and with every effort they found nothing "wrong" with either of us, and after a couple rounds of Clomid, some iuis (intra uterine insemination, aka "the turkey baster") and even a shot of HCG and a -- shudder -- laparascopic surgery, they gave me the "unexplained infertility" diagnosis. All of that in about five months' time.

Exhausted from the treatments, wigged out from the fertility drugs, and totally freaked out by having the first-ever invasive surgery of my life, I decided to STOP and go the wholistic, natural, hippie freak health nut route instead.

I started seeing an acupuncturist, Sarai Stapleton, who had mentored under Dr. Randine Lewis, an MD and a Chinese Doctor, who wrote a book called The Infertility Cure and who leads retreats for people trying to conceive called "The Fertile Soul." I had had such great luck with acupuncture before, in balancing out my hormones and normalizing my periods, that I decided to put my hormonal balance into Sarai's hands.

She really worked with me, tweeking her treatments and her herbal formulas to fit my precise needs and unique symptoms. I liked that she also supported my vegetarianism, and that she didn't just outright forbid me to continue to see my fertility doctor. I decided that on my own, after about four weeks of treatments from Sarai. The fertility clinic wanted us to start pulling out the "big guns;" they would start injections and if that didn't work, IVF. They told us from the beginning that, because of my age --41-- they were going to get aggressive with the treatments pretty quickly.

Now I'm not saying that fertility specialists and clinics and all the crazy ART (assisted reproductive technology) has nothing good to offer; they do. It does. But from the Chinese Medicine perspective, a drug like Clomid, which stimulates ovulation, produces too much heat in the body for some women, and might actually even make them sterile. For example.

Sarai always took her time with me, listening to my every detail of complaint and physical symptom, writing everything down in my chart, explaining everything to me if I asked. Chinese Medicine, particularly acupuncture, fascinates me and makes sense to me. I share a massage clinic space with two acupuncturists, and we talk a lot about treatments, herbs, and the meridiens. It so complements yoga. But I digress.

The basic theory, as put forth by Dr. Lewis and others, is that it takes 90 days for a normal, healthy egg to ripen in the ovary. So their treatments, their herbs, their diet, all cater to nourishing that process. From their perspective, the Western approach is to heat up the ovaries to the extreme, causing immature eggs to ripen too quickly and too many eggs to release at one time. The chances of any of those eggs coming to full fruition and being healthy, from the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) perspective are slim to none.

So I decided to change my diet, cutting out most bovine dairy (switched over to goat cheese, and was already fully into soy milk!) and for my constitution, very few cold or raw foods, and -- GULP -- NO caffeine. Wow, was that hard. I am a hardcore espresso/coffeehouse addict. But I did it.

Oh, and no sugar. (Surprisingly not hard for me to do since I really am not a sugar addict, but a chips addict.) So fried foods were particularly hard to eliminate, or at least cut back on. But I did it. And so, believe it or not, did my husband.

We started the acupuncture and herbs right before my 42nd birthday in May, 2006.

We took a new attitude, a new approach, toward conceiving our baby: My body/his body was fertile. It just needed nourishing and rest. He committed to a twice-daily qi-gong routine; I committed to less strenuous yoga practice, and taking on fewer projects. We journaled. We made stuff together. We continued talk therapy. We visualized. We loved. We had lots of preconception sex. We had fun. But still...nothing. I was checking my ovulation with an OPK (ovulation predictor kit) and it kept falling on the ninth day of my cycle. Sarai really wanted it to get to "at least the double digits." My cycle was always very short and light. Every 24 days I would bleed for about 3-4 days. As I got older, the periods got lighter. We were trying to extend that cycle, or at least have me ovulate on day ten.

Thanksgiving came and went. Nothing. Christmas came and went and damn, even James Brown died. Nothing. I had decided to take the month of December off from teaching yoga and giving massages. My body really appreciated the rest. I cut back on classes I was teaching come January. And then...something happened.

I got my period on January 8th, 2007. I was sooooo depressed. Me, the tough yogini who could accept and tolerate ALL that life had dealt. I was angry with Sarai, and thought it was about time to go back to the fertility center. I had numerous psychological breakthroughs, cut through many layers of deep shit from childhood or whatever, deeply held fears about becoming a parent, about my body getting bigger and expanding, about being barren or old or dispensable when I had once been young, hot, vital.

I also went to see my friend Liz Quigg, who practices a fantastic technique called Mayan Abdominal Massage. I'd been to see her off and on for the past couple of years, and I knew the technique could help menstrual irregularities and pain and yes, even infertility. Liz also does a powerful energy work called Sat Nam Rasayan, all of which is explained on her beautiful website.

Between Sarai and Liz, I had a team of female advocates, who fully believed in the power of my own body to be fertile, juicy, and ripe when everything else in the world spoke against that. Liz has a bumper sticker on her car that says "Save the Uterus!" Which I grew to appreciate immensely. I spent all of my money and time on treatments with Liz and Sarai and of course my talk therapist, the Great Gail. Meanwhile, a weirdly high number of my yoga teacher colleagues and friends had either just given birth, or were about to give birth, or were also trying to conceive. I definitely felt held in a loving web of strong, natural women who were all undergoing this transformation together. I knew I had a network I could call upon if needed.

I studied the female reproductive system and began to understand it in a way I had never known before. I tailored my yoga practice to fit with the phases of my cycle -- the luteal phase, the follicular phase, etc. Someday I'll explain it in greater detail here. I am thinking all women trying to conceive need to have yoga practices that work within the parameters of these cycles. By learning about, and honoring, the phases of my cycle -- not just knowing when ovulation is supposed to occur -- I was able to know when to rest, when to get wild, when to take it easy and when to hold em, fold em, etc.

So on January 15, when I saw a blackish bloody spot in my underwear, I freaked out. Not only was I having my period -- AGAIN -- but it was super early! "What the fuck?" I said it, out loud, in the bathroom. I was heartbroken. And furious. I would have to fire Sarai. It had been eight months of treatments with her. Both of us were getting frustrated. I backed out of taking a yoga class that day, and I cancelled my appointment with Sarai. I even made an appointment with another acupuncturist for the next day. I went straight to bed, moping. Yet there was hardly any blood the next day. The new acupuncturist, supposed to be a specialist, took my pulse, listened politely to my tale of woe, and smiled smugly when I told him, "There is a chance right now that I might be pregnant." "Not likely," he said. I enjoyed his treatment, went home, and saw more blackish blood in my panties. "Damn it!" All was lost. I was heading back to the fertility clinic.

I decided, on a whim, to take an EPT. What if the blood I'd seen was actually implantation bleeding? I really thought I had ovulated about a week before; we had lots of "togetherness" every single day leading up to it and beyond. And I just "felt" pregnant. It was kind of the cliche, but hey. This time it was true. I took an EPT a day for about four days. The first day the little stripe indicated I was pregnant...but very slightly. And each day the stripe got darker. Still, it was the first time really a second stripe had appeared. I went to my gyno and they gave me a blood test. The HCG levels were up. Two days later, another test. Even higher! I was officially pregnant. And the levels just kept doubling every few days. It was amazing. My heart beat about twice as fast in my chest as usual, and I was very nauseated.

I called Sarai to tell her the news. She was elated, yet cautious. I called the other acupuncturist to cancel my next appointment with him; would I ever see him again? "Not likely." The rollercoaster ride of the next few weeks can be summed up in a few short sentences, thank God.

1. Definitely preggers. Find actual obstetrician to get initial test results, make sure all is well. Thrilling ultrasound pics of yolk sac.
2. Google every symptom, obsess, worry, relax.
3. Undergo 26-hour teacher training in one weekend; eat a continual stream of fake meat and trail mix. Yoga practice already affected at 7 weeks.
4. Brown spotting, panic.
5. Brown spotting, bedrest for two weeks.
6. Normal, healthy ultrasound with swimming baby and fastbeating heart at nine weeks.
7. Come to terms with my overly active lifestyle.
8. Throw up once in car en route to teach yoga class.
9. Alternate between ravenous and nausea to point of insanity.
10. Gain more than 12 pounds in first 9 weeks.
11. Read. Lots.
12. Off bedrest, back in action, still nauseated, happy to be taking Unisom and B6 for morning/all day sickness and wearing travel sickness wristbands.
13. Horny, but...
14. Vivid, deeply symbolic dreams. Much of which feature me trying on cool vintage store clothes by the truckload. And bodies of water and big houses.
15. Marvel at well over a dozen friends and yoga colleagues who are either pregnant, just gave birth, or are "trying." Font of wisdom.
16. Field daily calls from mom and aunt...love it.
17. Take pics of belly getting big.
18. Breathless, pelvic pain, alternate between insomnia and narcolepsy.
19. Keep journal for growing butterbean to someday read; keep alternate journal for me to read.
20. At some point, we foster four chihuahua mix puppies; survive the poop smells and manage to let them go for adoption.
21. Somehow make it to fifteen weeks.
22. Due date is October 10-16, give or take a few.

Second Trimester Blues

Well, here we are at the second trimester and I am still nauseated as hell. I thought this was all supposed to clear up and I was supposed to become Miss Mary Sunshine, all radiant and glowing instead of fat and whimpering? Ugh.

This weekend A and I went to the movies for the first time since I got pregnant -- January -- and saw "Hot Fuzz." It was pretty good. I'm not much for big explosions and guns and car chases these days, anymore, but it was funny so that sort of made up for the bombasticness of it all.

We both loved "Shaun of the Dead," the same guys who made "Hot Fuzz." I think "Shaun" was much better, but still, considering the crap that makes it onto the movie screen these days, "Hot Fuzz" holds up.

I took a six-hour yoga teacher training workshop with my awesome friend and teacher, Christina Sell. It was quite fun but grueling. I realized en route that I had forgotten to take the magic morning sickness potion of B6 and Unisom, so by 4 pm I was very green around the gills and by 530, with just half an hour of the workshop left to go, I split. Just in time to take a 30-minute nap before heading off to see Lisa Lampanelli, the beloved "Queen of Mean." Good Lord is she filthy...and funny!

At one point during the show she asked all the Moms to raise their hands, and without even thinking, my hand shot up. She praised us for being so cool, for not losing our sense of humor and becoming like her dreaded enemies, the soccer moms of Connecticut. I have to admit it was kind of thrilling to know that I am thinking of myself as a mom already. Thank you, Lisa Lampanelli, for bringing out my inner mom!

Too bad I'll have to keep my child from her material until they pass puberty.