The Mind of Olivia Drab presents Ollie World

Before I shuffle off in the Typepad sunset, I thought I would leave this link:

http://drabkitchen.blogspot.com/

It will be my new (free) food-based blog (though I'm sure I will talk about other stuff too from time to time.) Nothing glamorous, and nothing at all YET, but soon. Very soon. Come visit sometime.

Misc Debris

Once the doors are shut at this here joint, here's where you can go to continue to read the continuing adventures:

Facebook

Twitter

Considering a new blog that might continue on a free platform. It won't be infertility/miscarriage-focused, though. Not sure the direction, still in planning stages... stay tuned.

Swan Song

I've been blogging for seven years now. My first blog was in February of 2004, shortly after my seventh miscarriage (weird to think it was that long before I finally broke from message boards to my own platform.) I began after the prompting of Julia (Uncommon Miscarriage) and after falling madly in bloglove with Getupgrrl and Julie (a little pregnant). It has served me well. It saved my sanity during a time when the old sanity was starting to look for coins to pay the boat to Valhalla.

In these seven years, a lot has happened. The two most important happenings being two pregnancies that didn't fail, but flourished into healthy, kooky girls (the oldest of which, Lauren, just turned four this week.)

Speaking of Lauren's birthday, it was a week of way too many cupcakes and now I need a diet.

But I digress...

The time is nigh to let it go. I am horrendously slack at updating the blog these days. It's not that I don't have much to say, it's that I either don't have the time time to gather my full spectrum of thoughts into one coherent entry, or that I just don't feel as raw inside as I did for so, so long. The need to push my thoughts outward is now limited to Facebook entries (of which I am HIGHLY proflic, lemme tell ya. If you aren't over there on the old fb, you're missing out on my brain party... or maybe you really aren't missing much, it's a tossup.)

So here's the gist of the matter. This blog expires November 8. It's costly, and let's face it, I am a starving artist. I work for the love of my art, not for money.

*pause for Opheliaesque laughter while opening can of cheap refried beans*

But seriously, I'm letting the blog go. It's melancholy. I've loved it and relied on it (and all of you) for so long, but its time. There's a chance I might regroup and start something new and design'y over at (free) blogger, but that has yet to be determined.

But if you can't stand the thought of never hearing my sweet, sweet words again, I will always be found at facebook. No joke. I'm there A LOT.

Some things will never change

There are a few things that still get to me. Seeing two lines on an HPT (in commercials, ads, photos, the ones I have superstitiously kept from Veronica's gestation, etc.) still sends tremors of excitement and vomitous nervousness down my spine. Hearing the word, "miscarriage" causes a Pavlov's Dog reaction, where I absently walk to the liquor cabinet to make a White Russian. And this:

This is a screenshot of Typepad stats. Even though I haven't taken basal body temps in 6 years, I still subsconsciously think, "My temps look like the Rocky Mountains!"

Raising a diva

Veronica is a laid-back baby. She sleeps through the night, in her own bed, and only cries when one of the majors is in play--hungry, wet/dirty diaper, cold/hot--or when she's feeling left out. Pretty much the standard baby stuff. It's such a different experience from Lauren that, at first, we wondered if there was something wrong with Veronica. But no, she's just mellow.

Lauren, on the other hand, is a handful and a half. Sometimes frustrating, most of the time hilarious. All the time, diva. She manipulates our moods on a whim. It's always interesting though.

I should probably update this soon, huh?

No one make a sound...

[for the proper effect, read the following as told in a whisper]

I think maybe possibly I might have finally reached escape velocity away from the woes and complications of the Drab Maternity. Shhh.

[you may resume normal reading volume]

Let's chronicle the whole thing, shall we?

2002: Hey, let's have a baby!

2002-2006: Descent into Hell after time and time again pregnancy loss, invasive and non-invasive fertility treatments and Mengelesque tests are conducted, surgeries are endured, alcoholic beverages and fattening comfort foods are consumed.

2006-2007: The little pregnancy that could! Lauren is conceived and born. Pregnancy was awful and I was a nervous wreck.

2008: Finally bond with Lauren on a true level outside of constant post-miscarrier maternal freakout level where my agonizing subconscious was still so sure she was going to be a miscarriage even after she learned to smear pudding in her hair.

May 2010: Miscarriage #10

July 2010: Little pregnancy that could part deux! Veronica is conceived!

July 2010-May 2011:

• Vomitous Gallorous - Morning sickness beyond what's natural, stretching into 2nd trimester
• Placenta Previa - Placenta hangs around the cervix just long enough to freak me out, then, as if revealing a practical joke, slides away to a normal position at the last minute
• Gestational Diabetes - picks up where morning sickness leaves off, is never, ever under proper control
• Weight Gain - NILL. Every appointment I get a lecture from my OB that I'm not eating properly. It's a lose-lose. I eat "properly", blood sugar elevates. I eat to keep blood sugar on the level, weight drops. I give up and drink a ton of whole milk, eat a lot of trail mix and hamburgers. Only gain 4 lbs throughout pregnancy, decide to ignore my OB's scorn since the baby was growing.
• Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction - Think "marionette in unsightly girdle". Can't walk, dread bedtime (no comfortable positions ever). No baby will go through those gates is the general consensus. And the general consensus is right on.
• Irregular heartbeat - Baby has an arrhythmia on doppler. After many tests, arrhythmia never seen again.
• Contractions galore! - Contractions, contractions! Get your contractions here! Plenty to go around! Contractions start around 7 months and never let up.
• Early labor - Ugh. Spend a delightful evening in labor and delivery hooked up to The Machine, getting terbutaline to stave off contractions.
• True labor - Two days before c-section, labor begins. I am so used to "discomfort" that I don't even realize that's what's happening. April 10, 4:30 am, go to hospital in full-blown labor complete with bloody show and agonizing contractions that vaguely feel something like a tear in the galactic lining has allowed an alien armada to begin their genocidal sweep of all that's good. Pelvic exam reveals a mere fingertip dilation. After TWO DAYS OF CONTRACTIONS. Reiteration that baby will not exit through blocked fire exit doors. Must break hole in wall.
• C-section - Surprisingly textbook. Hm.
• Hemorrhage - OOOOOOOOOOOH MYYYYYYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOOD! BLOOD EVERYWHERE! THE PAIN, OMG THE PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN! (Only Pain Scale #10 I've ever had, as Pitocin is started and a man's giant hand is enlisted to pull out giant clots.) Pretty sure I'm going to die, lots of primal moaning and swearing, blood, holy crap the blood. Blood pressure plummets. I lose more blood than I did in the c-section. Oddly, no transfusion takes place. Still amazed by that.
• Jaundice - Veronica is jaundiced. Stuck under bilirubin lights for 8 hours, we have to watch as she slowly sunburns. I can't snuggle with her. Kills me. Brad stays up with her all night while I am forced to sleep by copious amounts of drugs.
• Gallbladder from Hell - I spend an evening the emergency room as a 2mm gallstone is passed through the bile duct. Pain level exacerbated by still-healing c-section incision. Pain Scale #9. Tied for second place with endometriosis cramps at their worst.
• Mastitis - Ow. Fever. Chills. Ow.

And that brings us current. I've been given a tentative clean bill of health on both surgeries and am ready to resume normal activities. Including exercise, which I sorely need because the midriff is nothing but goo. Bleah.

But here's what I got out of it all:

Pretty awesome for 9 years of stuff.

Will update soon. For now, I am battling mastitis and it su-u-ucks (so to speak). *grooooan*

Couch potato

My OB pretty much gave me hell at our last visit. After the ultrasound proved there to be nothing out of the ordinary going on (in spite of the pain), she declared that I am doing too much too soon.

It's true. I suck at bedrest, as we learned in last month's episode, "Bedrest because otherwise you will go into painful early labor" (and then I basically did just that, although not as early as it could have been). I am not a good patient. I am horrible at it. I can't make myself lie around all day doing nothing, asking others to do for me. I feel like a lazy slug, and it eats away at my psyche.

This horrible pain has helped change my tune a bit. I have discovered that on days I do things, I bleed rather heavily and I hurt... a lot. On the days I shut my piehole and sit on the couch, popping my pain meds and guzzling water while jockeying the remote control, I hardly bleed at all, and the pain is minimal (big fat duh). So I've learned to be a couch potato.

But come six weeks, I'm doing stuff, daggumit. I'm bored out of my skull and TV blows. Augh. Plus, it leaves more time for me to start fights on Facebook, and that's no good for anyone.

...And yet MORE.

The fat lady hasn't sung YET.

In keeping with this horrendous recovery, a new complication has arising. It seems that I might possibly have an interior incisional abscess brewing. My lower right is in so much pain that the lightest touch makes me recoil. There is a small grape-sized knot under the skin that fills my body with heavy volts of pain if it is pressed. So I will be going back in for a much-dreaded ultrasound this afternoon to investigate further. I say much-dreaded because it will take pressure on a very sensitive spot to get an image, and I really don't look forward to that.

UPDATED

Not an abscess. No idea what it is. I had an ultrasound, which hurt like a mofo. All that was discovered was a grape-sized mass of "flesh" around the internal incision. "Perfectly normal" according to the OB. Then she lectured me about "doing too much" and not taking my Percocet. So I'm now back on the damnable drug, which is not so very awesome right now (hurl, headache, hurl), and back on the couch. I'm allowed to go up-down the stairs once per day (to go to bed).

My guess is that it is a severed nerve or a combo of nerves and massive scar tissue combined. Either way, it hurts. A lot. And I'm really tired of it.

Abi, I admit, I daydreamed about it being an abscess that needed to be opened/drained. At least it would have been something "fixable".

Julia, we have to stop having so many uterine similarities. Let's just copy each other's shoe collections instead.