Bliss...

...is in short supply around here lately, so I'm leaping on it where I find it. For example, tonight's dinner.

My tummy decided against the salmon (broiled 10 minutes each side, coated with a paste of mayonnaise and lemon juice), but the taters are right on. I found this recipe a couple of weeks ago in my Italian cookbook: it's for chicken and potatoes. Basically you prepare chicken pieces and potatoes for roasting, then pour over them a mix of a couple tablespoons each of olive oil and lemon juice, a good amount (maybe a tablespoon) of rosemary, salt and pepper to taste, then roast at 350 til done (around 40 min). The meat is okay.. I've tried it with salmon, too. The potatoes, on the other hand, turn out divine! They soak up the lemon juice, and... oh, you have to try them to understand. Tonight I did the taters just alone with the ..sauce?, and it's just what the midwife ordered. Mashed up in a big heap on my plate with lots of butter... yum.

More niftiness

I do have meatier posts in mind, but this week I've kind of been letting gravity have its way with me.

Too Big For My Skin

Via Rixa.

Finally, an answer.

I'm not ready to write extensively about this right now - for one thing I'm just too physically tired - but I want to get a post on this out into the ether.

Yes, I have miscarried, again.

Four very rough weeks of couch rest, uncertainty, and bleeding later, the answer is that I was indeed pregnant, and I am indeed no longer so.

I don't know right now whether or not I will write more about this in the future; I probably will, but right now I want to focus more on resting, healing (body and soul), and enjoying my beautiful daughter than on the grief of four lost pregnancies in five months.

My friends, I love you all very much, and appreciate the support you have given me in the last few weeks.

Irony

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Memorial Day, and the irony is that I'm in too much pain right now to talk about either my pain or the irony.

Man in labor?!

Much is up in the air, and so I don't want to post any updates before I have solid knowledge (rather than unhappy suppositions). But y'all deserve a post, so watch this:



Please note: the suggested coping mechanisms do in fact help in actual labor, since the pain of labor is related to specific work and baby position, rather than just to muscular contractions. Still, this is an amusing watch.

Words

This morning our older cat Eevie is complaining loudly about a distinct lack of breakfast. The result? The Infanta can now say "meow"!

Updates

So, I imagine you're all wondering what the whole bedrest thing is about. Yes, I'm still under orders to rest as much as possible; not technically bedrest, but I can really tell the difference in the way I feel between sitting and lying down.

So anyway, here's the deal: I'm currently pregnant. The problem is that I've been having a lot of spotting, to the point that it's a "threatened miscarriage". The way I've been feeling I think the bean is likely to stick, but it's not sure yet, and besides, my feeling may just be wishful thinking. But the morning sickness is real, and so are the food aversions, the heightened sense of smell, and the tender belly.

The part that really sucks is that as part of this rest cure I'm not allowed to lift more than 20 pounds - and since the Infanta is just about exactly that weight, I can only lift or carry her in brief and urgent moments. Also, trying to rest with a sick toddler is nigh impossible...

So that's what's up with me. I will post updates as they're available.

I Love My Friends

I've put myself on bedrest for the last few days; my body has given notice that I need to STOP for a bit, so I'm doing my best. Trouble is... bedrest is nigh impossible with a 16 month old. So, I've ended up leaning on some wonderful people to help wrangle the Infanta so that I don't have to be up and down chasing her all day. Sunday Josh managed her, despite his lingering nasty cold. Yesterday I called my friend Amber, whose daughter is about a month older than the Infanta; they came and spent a mellow afternoon. It helps that the girls play well together (as much as babies their age are capable of it). Today my friend Katie came over, bringing her boys. Katie rocked my world. She came over with the intent of not only keeping me company and distracting the Infanta, but also of cleaning the house. And clean she did! The instant she walked in, she started picking up toys (which the kids naturally promptly started taking out again). She moved from there to clearing the dining room table, and thence to starting a load of dishes. She paused a bit there to watch part of a movie and knit a bit, but then she hopped up again, picked the toys up, and vacuumed. Then she did another load of dishes, following that up with cleaning assorted counter clutter. Then, as she left, she remarked that she was lazy today! Because, you see, she'd intended to do laundry as well, and didn't get to it!

Tomorrow Josh will be home again, taking care of his cold, and incidentally wrangling Herself. I'm hoping that I won't need the help much past this week, that this rest will be enough to ease my troubles; I have seen signs that I may be healing as I hoped, but I certainly don't want to jeopardize that healing by taking too much on again too soon.

Salmon my savior

Following last night's pumpkin mac disaster, I pulled a piece of salmon out of the freezer and made this. It took a great deal longer than it should have (twice the recommended cooking time, grr..) because I didn't pull the fish out to defrost early enough, and it went into the oven still partially frozen. Still, once it was finally done, it was delicious! I threw together some garlic rosemary potatoes on the fly to round out the meal... they also took a bit longer to cook than I'd hoped, but potatoes seem always to do so for me.

Josh, thank you for putting up with my occasionally ..experimental cooking. I love you.

How to make Pumpkin Mac

1) Decide to have chili mac for dinner, so ask husband to get chili out of the freezer. This step is key.

2) Start defrosting the container you assume contains chili.

3) Begin making mac & cheese as usual (yes, it's out of a box. sue me.)

4) Upon reaching the stage of adding the chili, dump the contents of the freezer container without ever seeing what they actually are.

5) Realize the mix-up when what you've dumped into the pasta HAS NO BEANS.

6) Go for broke and add the sorts of spices you'd add to any pumpkin or squash dish.

I think it's actually quite edible, even though it's not at all what I had in mind. Since Josh dislikes winter squash he's not so happy, though... I think I owe him a salmon dinner tomorrow night!

Girl meets Box

I looked up this morning to see the Infanta squeezed into a box, so I reached for my camera. I didn't catch her sitting down again, but she sure is cute anyway...

Labor Song

Breakfast for Dinner

Although stuffed on eggs and polenta, the Infanta apparently can't eat too much bacon. Definitely her father's daughter!

Threefer Thursday

1) I got to check the inside of the Infanta's mouth this afternoon, and three more molars are peeking through. It's just one point each so far, but they're there. She also has at least one canine trying to make it in... That's everything but her second year molars making an appearance, and she's still short an incisor. I'm beginning to wonder vaguely if I should be concerned. But only vaguely.

2) I have three client meetings in three days this week! Makes me feel like a real doula or something. One's a postpartum visit, one's mostly a formality with a mom that (re)hired me in February (the instant she got the positive test, basically), and only one's a new client... but still! Business! It's awesome!

3) Did you know that I tweet? (In case you didn't know, that's the commonly accepted present tense for the verb to Twitter.) I succumbed a few months back when I discovered that the Yarn Harlot tweets... and I'm hooked. *sigh* Anyway, if you don't get a Twitter feed yourself, you can follow my random thoughts over on the sidebar. It's currently stuck a ways down, but I'll move it higher at some point.

Leaps and Bounds

The Infanta's communication ability is growing daily - even hourly, sometimes. Her three signs count for five words - "all done", "nurse"/"out", "more"/"food". She can say "cat", "dada", "mama", and another I'll mention later, and babbles in very sophisticated-seeming ways. She nods "yes" and shakes her head "no", and will respond appropriately to some surprisingly complex questions. During mealtimes, she'll often reach for whatever's on the fork, but if we say "let Mama (Daddy) do it", she'll put her hands down and let us feed her (usually).

This afternoon, she asked to be put in the play pen. She did it with signs and gestures, but when I asked if that was what she was saying, she nodded emphatically. When I set her in, she settled down happily to play.

Her current favorite word, though? "No!"

It sneaks up on you

All this month so far, I keep thinking randomly: "I should have been five months pregnant." I didn't think I would still be hurting this much at this point. I know I will never be 'done' grieving, but I didn't think it would still feel this fresh. What will New Year's bring? That would have been my due date.

Took a moment..

When I saw this post on my reader, I thought it must be pointing to one of the birth blogs I follow, not a gardening blog.

This'n'that

It was a long, hard week last week. The coming weeks don't look like they'll be much better, in some ways; easier in others, I hope.

In no particular order:

A mom I know is in the process of losing her baby at 26-27 weeks. I'm not close friends with her, but it's agonizing to watch even at this remove.

Josh and I had a humdinger of a fight. It's more or less resolved now, but wasn't fun while it lasted.

I've started the process of night weaning the Infanta, partly in preparation for moving her out of our bedroom. It's not going so well, partly because I'm having a really hard time with how hard she cries (and how firmly she refuses to sleep) when she doesn't nurse as long as usual overnight. She usually only wakes me a couple of times during the hours I'm trying to wean, but that's not the point. This is one of the things I don't see getting more fun anytime soon.

And then today I discovered that the fall changes to the bus routes not only meant that one of the buses I use frequently is no longer free, but they also cut significant portions of the service to our side of town. On the one hand, this is going to be rough on our already very limited budget, not to mention that it means that I can basically only go downtown from home, not at all to pretty much anywhere else on this side of the river. On the other, I'm taking it as incentive to finally get my damn driver's license. Of course, then we'll have to work out the car situation...

Still, fall has begun, and not everything in my life sucks right now. :)

Guerilla theater

This is brilliant, and reminds me of something my high school drama class did one afternoon. Enjoy!