Is It Stealing?

A local gas station had a computer glitch for a few hours in the wee morning hours. Instead of charging 2.86 / gallon, customers were charged 1 cent / gallon. A poll on the local news station asked, "If you got gas for 1 cent per gallon due to a computer error, would you pay back the difference?" The results are showing that about 60% said they would not pay back the difference.

It that stealing? What would you do? What does it say about our society that the majority would not pay back the difference?

___________________________________________________________________

In pregnancy news - we are 20 weeks and 2 days and all is going well. I am definitely feeling movement and our anatomy scan shows everything is where it should be. Perhaps it says something about my experience that I said during the u/s, "Could it be that we might have two healthy children?!"

What's In A Life?

Today it seems important to remember the past. It seems disloyal somehow to forget what happened five years ago today. Tonight at around 8:00 pm in 2004, I gave birth to a baby boy. A baby who could have been one of the 34 embryos who (that?) didn't implant or one of the two who implanted for just a few weeks. He had serious birth defects that made him non-viable outside the womb. In a way, he was a pregnancy that went on too long.

Why do I feel the need to honor and remember him when I don't feel the same about the other 34 embryos? In the end, they all had the same potential to life.

I don't believe in a soul. Whoever Ernest might have been had he been well, I will never know. I didn't know him at all. He no longer exists. He was all potential or, more accurately, perceived potential. By all logic, I could let this day pass like the days that I miscarried or days were I am reminded of events during my failed IVF cycles - a moment of sadness or reflection or even to just push the memory out of my mind.

I don't want to be sad today. I don't know how to remember and not be sad. It seems important to remember - as if to tell Ernest, "We remember you." Which makes no sense if he no longer exists.

I don't know. Perhaps we can mark the day in a way that emphasizes and celebrates what we do have while still acknowledging what we lost. In years past, we went geocaching but last year seemed rushed (to beat the setting sun - our first year that we weren't either off work or it landed on a weekend) so I think we will do something different this year. I suppose Brad and I will decide when he gets home.

Oh, Ernest, I wish you were here.

Perfect Moment Monday: Taking A Breath

It is that time of year again and I suspect (I hope) it is coloring my current situation. I have been feeling my baggage lately. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and wonder how I can still be breathing. I wonder how it all went so perfectly wrong - not just Ernest's conception and death but the 2 years before and the 4 years after while we waited for our Someday Baby. I have longed, once again, for our mutually genetic child so strongly that I felt, in that moment at least, I would trade in LB for Ernest to have lived and the following four years to have never happened.

Such thoughts lead to so many doubts: Would I have loved my genetic baby more? Am I really bonded with LB? What does it mean to be bonded to your child? Would I die for her? Am I a good mother to her? Will she grow up to say, "My mom did her best, but I knew she always wanted someone different."?

A few days into this funk, Brad and I were sitting in a cafe holding hands while LB made the rounds to family and friends - getting "pounds" (or however you say it), dancing to the music, signing for more whenever the music stopped. We were watching her meander and then, quite suddenly, the moment struck. It reminds me now of the last time when I was pregnant and I sat down my baggage for a minute. The image is burned in my mind: the feel of Brad's hand, the angle of my head, LB poised to walk out the door of the cafe and into the buildings corridor. Just an everyday, innocent moment; but I realized I was in love - in love with Brad, with LB and with my life - just the way it is. No regrets, no unfulfilled dreams, no still-healing wounds. What a perfect moment and I am so glad I got to experience it.*

Check out Lori's blog to see what other Perfect Moments people are sharing.

*I want to add that I have been thinking about my feelings for LB a lot lately - not just at night when my thoughts can run the most negative, but in the light of day. I realize I would die for her and that my interactions with her come from a place of love not just doing what I think I ought to do. I think we are doing ok.

Just A Little Rant

I will try not to be too negative because this isn't really a big deal, but it bugs me just the same.

The other day I was checking CNN for the headlines. I think it may have been the day the Nobel Peace prize was announced. Definitely some news there, but it was a few other articles that irritated me.

All on the same day there was:

• News that the Dugger's were expecting their first grandchild
• Someone had her second set of twins in two months
• Someone was expecting a boy

The last article I clicked on(in hindsight proving that it IS news) because it was the most non-news of them all. I thought it might at least explain who the person was and why I should care that she was having a boy. It didn't. It just said that this person was very happy to be pregnant, but even happier to know the baby was a boy so she could now go shopping and fix up the nursery. WTF? You and a million other people, I suspect.

Again, why should I care? How is this news?

Ok. I am off my soap box.

As for a more personal update:

• LB may be getting her first illness. She has a runny nose and Brad has a cold. I am hoping it is just a teething thing and it will pass.
  
• I think I have been feeling LBII move lately, but still won't believe it until I see it - next u/s is this Friday.
• We are seriously talking about me quitting my job if we have a live baby in March. I already feel like we don't make enough money, but who doesn't? Everything has trade-off's.
  
• We are shopping for a king size bed. The biggest question - will it fit into our bedroom and will we still be able to open our dresser drawers?
  
• My diet has taken a nose dive. While LB has been mostly sleeping through the night for several months now, I still don't. I wake up every time she moves, which is often. If she doesn't move for several hours, I wake up to make sure she is still breathing. It's crazy. I wonder if it is changing hormones that make it harder to sleep deeply. At any rate, I keep up my energy by eating lots of carbs - usually in the form of chocolate. I pop handfuls of chocolate chips like a addict popping pills.

It seems like I am a bit of a downer today. All my bullet points have a negative bent to them. When I do this to Brad he counters with, "Tell me something good that happened today." Here are some good things.

• I slept pretty good last night.
• LB and I danced to some kid music in the kitchen before work.
• After work, we hung out on a blanket in front of the fireplace and she played while I read.
• Right now LB is sitting on my lap and I am enjoying how it feels.
• Brad will be home soon and I am going to try really hard not to eat anymore banana chocolate chip cookies. (Why do I hear Yoda saying, "Either do or do not. There is no try."?)
  

Milestones

If you look closely at the picture on the left, you will see blue ink scribbles on the strip of wall. I all but had tears in my eyes as I took this picture with my cell phone to send to Brad while he was at work.

We have a little kid who wrote on our wall. How lucky are we?

Pregnancy Update

I have a rare moment when I am off work for the day and LB is sleeping (although I hope to join her soon) and thought I would give a quick update since I have been pretty quiet about the goings on around the pregnancy.

In a nutshell, the news is good. I am 16 weeks 4 days today. Yesterday was my appointment with my midwife (like the last pregnancy, I am seeing both a homebirth midwife and an OB; alternating every 2 weeks.) We heard that wonderful sound of a heartbeat and I think I even felt LBII move when she placed the doppler. I hope the movement will become more pronounced soon since it is so reassuring that the little guy is still alive.

In two weeks we will have an anatomy scan with my OB, but will not find out the sex. Hopefully we will find out that everything looks good, not that that is any kind of guarantee.

My mood seems to be improving after getting better for a bit and then worse again for a bit. I hope this is the end of getting worse. There are days when I have wondered if I would ever be truly happy again.

Speaking of being happy (or not), I am really unsatisfied with my job lately. Unfortunately, I don't think decent (not good, but ok) paying, part time jobs are readily available so it is this one or unemployment. Believe me that the latter is looking better and better. Brad will support me either way, but I know he prefers that I keep working. I don't earn much especially after paying a babysitter, but it is still enough to make the house payment each month (small house, remember?). Plus, if he suddenly lost his job I could probably go full time the very next day.

I also wonder how employable I would be 5 or so years from now, at 47-ish, if I were to quit working now. We do ok financially, but it would be nice to feel like we had a little more wiggle room in a few years.

Well, LB woke up, but I wanted to share what I found looking for median income - just trying to figure out where we stand. I was surprised to find we are in the 4th quintile. It makes me wonder how everyone buys what they buy. Oh wait, most people don't spend nearly two years net income on fertility treatments.

It is also interesting that if you make over $250,000 per year, you are in the top 1.5%. I wonder how many people in that range think they are in middle class? Well, I suppose they are in middle class if you define that bracket to cover 97% of the population.