Black Weekend Part I

[August 10, 2009]

Carey was pregnant for two months. It's over now. Thursday, August 6th our plan for dinner was that after work I'd go to Whole Foods, pick up a rotisserie chicken, then swing by and pick up Carey from the All-Star Fitness. As I was leaving the library she called me. In a panicked tone she explained there was blood. I didn't worry, though. We read in one of those books that this is pretty common in the first trimester. When I picked her up she was on her cell with the midwife. Because Carey wasn't cramping, the midwife encouraged us to monitor, but not to worry too much. Carey broke down crying. I tried to assure her (from my expertise gathered from lightly browsing maybe two books on pregnancy) explaining that this commonly occurred and had little to no bearing on the health of the pregnancy. She was just scared is all. We carefully drove the scooter home. I dropped her off, scooted back downtown to Whole Foods to get dinner (she wanted mac & cheese, her comfort food) and then a special stop at Dick's because she also wanted a cheeseburger. The bleeding continued through the evening. Around midnight Carey called the consulting nurse who promised we'd get a call back from the midwife on duty pronto. The midwife never called that night so we went to bed. The next morning there was a lot more blood. Some clots and brown trails of blood must have pooled overnight. It all came out at once. Carey called the consulting nurse again and then we finally got that call from the midwife who didn't call the night before because she thought is was too late (!). A plan was proposed. Two blood tests. One on Friday, one two days later on Sunday to compare hormone levels. If more hormones (a higher number?) where found in Sunday's blood test, good. If not, bad. Carey would have to sit around the house, no doubt worrying up a storm until Monday to actually find out the results. Mary Kay suggested she have me learn the meaning of fetch (not helpful). But then she also recommended Carey ask for another ultrasound for a quicker answer (helpful). And they got us in that day. I marveled at the technology and efficiency and even willingness of the HMO to help us out like that. So we got an ultrasound from a midwife.

During the ordeal, the midwife was mostly quiet or would keep saying that her ultrasound skills were not that great. Not something I wanted to hear. I also didn't want to hear the midwife say she was 99% sure Carey's body had already begun the process of expelling the non-viable pregnancy. But again with the "my ultra sound skills are not that great" caveat. So while we sat in the waiting room across from a happy and very pregnant couple, Carey all teary-eyed crying and me run down and defeated, the midwife called Radiology to see if we could come in ASAP and get an abdominal ultra sound ("for a much more clearer picture" she told us). On our walk from the midwifery building to radiology we began the process of giving up. Accepting the failure and loss. Carey, with dark humor, decided we should call the embryo Alice because I had been reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland at night to her and the once future baby. Then she thought better of it and suggested we call it Cheshire Cat because first it was there, and then it disappeared. We mocked the miscarriage pamphlet the midwife gave us while waiting to get the ultrasound. It was filled with trite quotes from grieving mothers anonymously signed by the likes of "mom from Ohio". There was even a whole page and a 1/5 for fathers! The midwife warned us that radiology closed at 5, but would try and squeeze us in, see if they would stay a little late even. We felt that pressure right away when the middle-aged guy with the Moe from the Three Stooges haircut hurried us down the hall to the ultrasound room. We arrived at the dim room at 4:45pm. It was Friday and this guy's week was probably juuuust about over. And boy he was fast with the ultrasound machine! Snappin' pictures from every angle possible at a furious pace. Dodging our questions right and left reminding us that he was not a doctor. But then at one point he paused for a second asking Carey if she'd ever had a pap smear. Odd question. Of course she had and she told him that. "Did you know you have two Uteruses?" He showed us on the monitor. If he hadn't of pointed it out, we'd have never known. The screen was just snowy TV static grays. But then he outlined it for us. Kind of like a misshapen heart split down the middle and pulled halfway apart. Two sides. Two Uteri. This would take longer than he'd hoped. He took Carey to the bathroom...and you know what? I don't know what happened in that bathroom. I forgot to ask. Anyway, he came back and set up the room for another ultra sound. This time vaginal. Then he had Carey undress and get up on the table again but now propped up with a paper towel over her naked lower half. She was gonna undress right there, but he insisted that he leave first. He fetched a doctor to check out the scene. Dr. O, she called herself. And she didn't know anything that was going on. She walked in all cheerful announcing, "Are you guys ready to find some good news (meaning the baby)?" But we quickly explained this was just a confirmation of a dead end. In an instant her face morphed like those theater masks from comedy to drama. The radiologist had Carey insert the ultrasound wand into herself. And several times after he moved it around, Carey groaned in pain. He apologized and you could tell he hated doing this, but he kept hurting her. Now he was perspiring. Light bounced off his wet forehead. He was afraid to look under the sheet or even be near her privates. We thought it was kind of funny. His awkwardness, that is. Dr. O tried to explain the Uterus Didelphys to us. She said it was rare, but not unheard of. She recommended we get an MRI to map out the crazy freak show that are Carey's reproductive organs. Both the radiologist and the Dr. said that Carey's ovaries were good, at least. In all this hooplah of the carnival sideshow uterus, we still hadn't gotten a straight answer about our embryo. Finally Dr. O said it. There's no heart beat. And that's when it really sunk in like a knife to the chest. It's over. Carey was right from the start.

After Carey got dressed we walked back to midwifery. Fortunately, the same midwife was still there. She took us in another room and we talked it out. The double uterus was kind of a good thing to focus on, get our minds off the current bad situation, though both Dr. O and the midwife explained that the didelphys probably was not the cause for the miscarriage. The midwife offered Carey some pills that would expedite the process of the otherwise spontaneous abortion. They go inside her, dissolve, and within 1 to 6 hours her body will start contractions and flush out the non-viable pregnancy. She warned us there would be cramps, then blood and everything would come out and then the pain would subside. She said it very straight forward like that. First this, then that, followed by this, the end. Like it was a calisthenics plan. Do ten push-ups, twenty sit-ups...you get the idea. The midwife did do a good job of explaining that Carey's body needed to get rid of this pregnancy because something was terribly wrong. She went over that guilt is a typical response, but there was nothing that we could have done to prevent this and that it's a good thing. We understood that. She talked about the difference between understanding this intellectually and the emotions of loss involved. As we left to rent a video (The State: Season 1 & 2) I said out loud that I thought I'd never hear myself saying, "Oh, no thanks. We won't be able to go out. We're going to stay in tonight and have a miscarriage."

Nicknames for Grandparents

[August 1, 2009]

While I was away having the time of my life at Camp Cote in NH (see picture below), Carey had her first visit with a midwife (July 24). She felt that she couldn't do it alone so she confided in Jennifer C who gladly went along with her. They did an ultrasound and the little seed-baby turned up with a visible, though not audible, heartbeat. This is good, she was informed. With the sighting of a heartbeat the chances of miscarriage go down from 20-25% to 3%! I learned all this from a photo-text and a phone call to the land line at Camp Cote. I had to speak in code so I couldn't ask too many details as there were ears all around without prior knowledge to the pregnancy. Luckily, Dan & Toby already knew so I could share the news with them. Show off my text image of the blurry little thing. A few days later in Connecticut we told Carey's parents during dinner at a restaurant. Carey and I got there early and scotch taped ultrasound photos to the inside of a few menus for Sam and Mary Kay. We got the hostess in on our scheme. She agreed to hand only them the specialized menus. For the longest time they didn't open their menus. It drove Carey and I mad! They just kept looking at the specials and wine list and just about anything else but their own damn menus! Finally Mary Kay opened hers and found the photo.

"What's this? Does anyone else have a picture of an ultrasound in their menu?" She seriously said that. Carey had written "Coming March 17"on the bottom, but it still didn't click.

Carey couldn't keep it in any longer. She interjected, "It's mine!"

"I KNEW IT!" Mary Kay was sure she already knew even though she had tested Carey the night before by offering her a drink of wine. (Carey took the drink, but she dumped it in the sink when no one was looking and took fake sips when she hoped people were looking.) Sam seemed more in shock than anything else. His response wasn't what I had expected. Ryan's was exactly how I guessed. Similar to how my reaction would have been if I were in his shoes (both of us being the youngest and all). Like I know I'm supposed to feel something, that it's a big deal and all but, I just don't resonate with it... But after thinking about it, Ryan decided he wanted to be the child's godfather. Not that he's religious. He just likes the sound of it. The prestige he envisions that comes along with the title a la Coppola's The Godfather films. Piyush was very happy and even verbalized his excitement in a much more watered down Indian accent then last time we saw him.

The next day for brunch with David and Nancy we came up with a semi-clever way to tell them. The good news, bad news routine. First the bad news, we won't be able to attend Carey's cousin Lindsey's wedding in March because of the good news - and here Carey pulled out the ultrasound photo. David was hysterical with hugs and handshakes and enthusiasm while Nancy said the same exact thing as Mary Kay, "I KNEW IT!" By which she meant that no, she didn't actually know until Carey reached for something in her purse...the ultrasound pic. I found it odd that both mothers said they knew it when they actually didn't. At any rate, the rest of the conversation was moderated by Nancy because this is her education, occupation, specialty and central life focus, pregnancy and birthing. Turns out she knows a lot. And she knows how to clearly communicate to first-timers. It only took a day before the Goldenbergs picked out their grandparent names for themselves. Sam wants to be called Poppee and Mary Kay...shoot, what is it? Something Irishy. Mah-moo? Moh-mee? Don't remember. I can't decide what I want to be called. Dad is pretty good. But pops might be fun. Not pappa, though. Well, maybe. Daddy sounds weird to me.

We found out from the midwife/ultrasound that the original date given is off by a few weeks. So at this point we are in the 8th week for the second time.

Flashback. The night before I flew to Camp Cote Carey was an emotional wreck. She was super negative, argumentative, and just in a nasty foul mood while also dreading being alone at home without me. After she dropped me off at the airport, I got a call a few minutes later. She needed talking down and believed she was having a panic attack. I don't remember what I said, but it seemed to work. The next morning she found out that she had a UTI and got some antibiotics. But then a week later the lab results were negative and she didn't have a UTI afterall. This worried her greatly. Her moods and body at odds with each other and her typical grounded self. The night she got home from CT (I flew home first), she had talked herself into a frenzy that these abdominal pains that she thought were a UTI must be something worse and she concluded that she was for sure going to have a miscarriage. This freaked me out. She was so dark and hopeless and emphatic and coercive, I started to despair. Then I thought about it and reminded her about the 3% stat we had just learned. Ultrasound heartbeat = drop in miscarriage rate from 20-25% to 3%. She calmed down. I calmed down. And since it was the hottest day in Seattle's recorded history (103 degrees! Unbearable!) we took our first ride on Link, the the new light rail, to an air conditioned theater to watch Bruno with Dan & Toby (it was so-so...not anywhere as good as Borat). Today she woke up early completely exhilarated. On a whim she drove all the way to Carnation to pick berries. Then she got bad news about her father being in the hospital and got really depressed. Crying, upset with friends for being flaky. Of course I can't say that I suspect she's having pregnancy moodiness. I'd get in trouble. But she does seem a little oversensitive.

Speaking of sensitivity, lovey time is quite low. "Mild" is putting it mildly. Her libido is nil. I'm not just talking about infrequency (two times in two weeks), but also boring or like she's just doing me a favor. A favor I gladly take, mind you. But this insufferable cold is keeping affection between us at bay. I was told I have to wait until the third trimester to get the other end of the spectrum, if you know what I mean.


Badminton at Camp Cote 2009 (I'm the one with my legs
all ready for action!)

Doubts and Schemes and Plans

[July 9, 2009]


In the last eight days Carey has not felt pregnant. "I don't feel pregnant," she tells me over and over. She's starting to show more signs of hyperactivity. Manic, excitable behavior. She convinced herself that her pregnancy had somehow disappeared. She bothered me to walk to Walgreen's with her to purchase another pregnancy test, talking a mile a minute the whole way there (it's that meth-like behavior again). At that point she had already tested positive twice - one home test and one from the doctor. The new test proved positive, of course. That was number three. This kept her confident until yesterday morning when she secretly urinated on another stick confessing to me later about it. Still pregnant. That's four tests so far. So much for trusting pee.



The secret is probably the most difficult thing about the whole deal (for me anyway). Saturday we attended Jennifer and Jeremy's wedding. Carey had some anxiety about the drinking. We didn't want to get found out just yet. It would look suspicious if she wasn't drinking at a wedding, right? So we hatched a little scheme. When the time came, I would offer her a drink and make sure everyone at our table heard me and then saw me return with a glass of wine. "Care. Can I get you a drink? Wine? Okay, I'll go get you a glass of wine. I'm going now to get you a glass of wine that has alcohol in it that you can drink." Not very slick, actually. Then she would bring the wine to her lips a few times and/or take the drink with her to the bathroom and dump some of it out. She over-did the fake drinking a bit (similar to my overacting about getting her a drink). I brought a few gluten-free beers for myself. She asked to try one (fake-try one for show). She brought it up to her lips too fast and the carbonation made a mini-explosion spraying all over her face which she quickly dried off. Still, no one seemed to notice. Even during the toasts. If we have to do it again, we should sneak in some sparkling cider as a decoy and just do away with all this tom foolery bad acting.


Last Friday marked 5 weeks. We took a picture of her from the side. Not much difference. Tomorrow week 6 begins. I've been trying to read to the baby cells every night since week five. Dr. Doolittle is the first book. Carey likes it, though she falls asleep almost immediately after I begin reading. I have to catch her up each night before I begin a new chapter. Which, naturally, irritates me to no end.


We began making plans for telling our fams. I canceled the Manchester (New Hampshire) to Newark (New Jersey) leg of my flight back from Camp Cote. Carey talked Ryan into driving to NH to pick me up on Monday, July 27. Piyush is in town from India so we'll get to tell that whole clan of her family maybe over dinner Monday night. I imagine Sam will be the most thrilled about the whole ordeal. We haven't figured out how to tell the Nancy side yet. Maybe lunch on Tuesday in New Haven. For my family, we're probably going tell them on Labor Day weekend in Portland - my parents and Wendy and Paul. Not sure about the Wayne-O group. I personally haven't told a single soul. It's good to talk about it with Carey a lot. To pacify the urge to blab about the new person on the way.

New Craziness on the Way

[July 1, 2009]

Last night the first signs of weirdness arrived. I got home from work after 8 and I found Carey reclined on the couch with my Macbook near her face. Nexulous or whatever that Facebook scrabble game is called appeared on the screen. She apologized for not having dinner ready and complained of strange sensations in her lower abdomen. Not cramps, but just an unusual discomfort. Naturally, as to be expected, I beat her for not having my dinner ready for me hot and on the table as soon as I got home... She looked lethargic. I prepped for dinner (microwaved) while she tried to get her mind off her pain by video chatting with Dan & Toby. She pulled up her shirt and flashed them. A few times, actually. She took it a little too far, in my opinion. Kind of like drunk behavior. We ate dinner on the couch because she only felt comfortable lying down. After dinner she passed out on the couch while I watched the early 80's classic TV show Square Pegs (thoroughly disappointing). The next day she made me aware that in the morning her bowel movements are of monster proportions. Consistently. I guess I needed that information...for what, though I don't know. These mood alterations continued. She's been sometimes acting sullen, depressed, quiet and not moving around so much and then to the other extreme. Yesterday morning she frantically ran around the house yelling at the printer/copier for being too slow. As if she had smoked some crystal meth and became angry at the slow pace of the world in comparison to her racing, stressed out mind. Even this morning she seemed distant, slow, not really her perky self. She admitted to being worried about losing the baby cells (as we prefer to call the pregnancy right now). The day before she lifted some chains at Home Depot (for her work) and feared that this might have dislodged the egg from its attachment to the uterus. I tried to calm her with the knowledge that at this point, the growing baby cells are tiny like an orange seed (actually just repeating back to her what she'd explained to me earlier).

Carey told Josie the news because she needed to tell someone. Other than that we are keeping the pregnancy on the down low.

Sunday night we watched the documentary The Business of Being Born. I freaked out. Sunday nights are not a good time to be introducing new and really intense pieces of information. I'm worn out from the week and weekend by then. The footage of natural birth showed women in equal parts terror and euphoria. The pain and impossibility, the suffering of child birth these women shared. Yikes! is an understatement. However, the Oxytocin rush seemed to compensate for the long, long horror of labor pains. Still, I don't know how they handle that for 12 to 24 to 36 hours. I realized how unnecessary men are in pregnancy and birth. As a dude you deliver your seed and then you are done. Deposit the goods and then become the sole changer of the cat litter. The film made me think about the future of sexes. From an evolutionary perspective, perhaps the male sex will not be needed if females can produce sperm (I think I heard that they already can? Scientists in England or something?). At any rate, the movie was eye-opening. I especially liked the expose of crooked hospitals, intervening and impatient doctors, the corrupt AMA, and the blind ignorance of America in regards to midwifery especially in comparison with the rest of the world. I used to be under the false assumption that midwives were all hippy-dippy crap. And it's true that the hippy communes practiced midwifery but only as mimicked from immigrant culture i.e societies that have been around much longer the the good ol' US of A. Turns out most of the world accepts midwifery as a viable option. So we're going natural. I'm down with that, but I'm not looking forward to labor.

New Person on the Way

[June 25, 2009 am]

Carey woke me up on purpose this morning. Usually it's by accident, or so she tells me. She is notorious for making a bunch of noise in the morning: her business cell phone will ring and/or she'll yell at somebody (usually a health insurance company rep) for their incompetence or she'll forget I'm sound asleep on my side of the bed and sit on my legs in order to pull her pants on. I've actually made peace with this inconsiderate behavior. It took five years to get to this point, mind you. But this morning while I was sound asleep she stuck a white plastic stick right in my face. My reaction of course was alarm followed by frightened hostility. After my eyes adjusted, I saw that the first response pregnancy test had a little LCD screen that said "yes+". After I was awake enough to understand what was going on I knew exactly what to do and did the right thing. I thoroughly dismissed it.

"It's like what, only 58% accurate?"

"No, that's how many people have the pregnancy hormone in their urine."

Urine. Do I really trust what pee has to say? The answer is no. It reminds me of those "doctors" of yore who ripped open a chicken and predicted people's future based on the splayed arrangement of the intestines. Carey believes in pee, however. And as an excellent example of how she roles, she emailed her physician, set up a pregnancy test at the doctors and 15 minutes later called me from there to see if I wanted to wait with her for the results. I was in the shower when she rang and then texted. We thought they'd take a blood test, a more reliable source of information, I thought. But nope. Turns out doctors believe in the mystical messages prophesied by pee. Carey came home with a piece of paper and a huge smile. The paper read, "Your pregnancy test results are positive. This means that you are pregnant." I knew it! I told her this would be no sweat. I explained that she's as fertile as they come and I'm super virile, so... And all that doubt about how my junk might not work? Ha! I'm a fucking champ! Literally. And I'm convinced I know when ____* was conceived.


Carey was fuzzy on the start and end date of her menstruation. She kept saying she has a 32 day cycle or whatever. So I guess there's a five day window when ovulation occurs and insemination is possible? To increase our chances, we hit it 12 days consecutively. Well, two days in there we rested...to heal. Two of the times ended up being a lot of work including minor unwanted hurting and difficulty (but success!) making it to the pop. Other than that it was very enjoyable. The last day of the marathon was a Sunday. The Glasses had just played a rockin' show at the Fremont Festival (summer solstice). That afternoon we did the massage and make love action without being in a hurry. The slow ride, if you will. It was hot. However, that wasn't the time I think it happened. That same night, after an hour of being asleep I half woke up in the throes of aggro sex. Usually this happens when it's, ahem, been awhile. The following morning I figured maybe it was her pheromones enticing me subconsciously in the middle of the night to impregnate her.


I must say I'm surprised at how thrilled I was at the news this morning. While eating breakfast and making my lunch I put on a few happy summer tunes that I'd been listening to on repeat as of late. Cortney Tidwell's "Don't Let the Stars..." dance club remix followed by Shiny Toy Guns car commercial cover of "Major Tom". Then I put on The Nightgowns "Animal Sounds".

I'm trying to not be too excited in light of the fact that this is so early in the pregnancy. It might not stick. But I'm hopeful even though I know better. My experience is that hope is just a set up for devastating disappointment. Still, that's in the back of my mind. It's pretty cool.

Michael Jackson died today at the age of 50.




*super secret name that under light of the current situation cannot be revealed...