Posts

A Little Death and A Lot of Grief

Image
  “A short list of what died that day: my daughter, me, my dreams, her future, all my gods, my laughter, the cabbage I covered my engorged breasts with, and this part of my stomach where I keep her sadness.” -Sarah Agaton Howes in “Lessons from Dying” I thought I knew what it was.  I didn’t know what miscarriage was.  Wasn’t it just a heavy period in the privacy of your home, maybe before you got too attached to the little one growing inside you? I knew the stats, memorized them when I got pregnant with Teddy. 20% chance of the pregnancy ending within the first 6 weeks.  10% between 6 and 12 weeks.  5% after the first trimester.  I learned new stats this time around.  1-3% of pregnancies end in the second trimester. 1-2% result in stillbirths (after 24 weeks). These stats are, of course, raw data, without accounting for race, socioeconomic status, or previous health conditions. Among Black and Indigenous individuals, these rates are much higher, as well as among those experiencing pove
Post a Comment
Read more

How to feed your child and get repeatedly ill while doing it

Image
When I was pregnant, I was not sold on the whole idea of breastfeeding. I mean, I knew the recommendations, but it just seemed so burdensome on one partner and not the other. Going into it, I was thinking I would try to do half breast milk and half formula because that seemed a way to make things more equal between partners.  I also knew that breastfeeding doesn’t work for everyone--your milk doesn’t come in or there isn’t enough, there are issues latching, it’s painful, other medical issues come into play, there aren’t enough maternal support structures after baby comes along (short maternity leaves), the mere mental and physical toll of being on call 24/7 (though pumping can help alleviate some of these problems), to name a few. Anyways, everything I thought I wanted went out the window when Teddy was born. I had no idea how badly I wanted to breastfeed this tiny little newborn until he had problems latching and I physically couldn’t. I pumped every three hours for the first two week
Post a Comment
Read more

The ninth month, birth, and postpartum

Image
I was feeling pretty good at 7 months pregnant. Which was the last time I posted on this blog. I had no idea how hard that final 1.5 months of pregnancy would be. About halfway through September, I finished an easy 5 mile run only to find myself crumpled on the ground afterwards, immobilized by intense pelvic pain. I cried and unable to stand, army crawled to our bedroom, where the pain subsided after about 45 minutes. This incident marked the beginning of the end of running while pregnant. I tried a few more short runs, but I could feel that same pain coming back and decided it was not in the cards to run all the way until my labor day. I had logically known I probably wouldn’t run my entire pregnancy, but emotionally it was a hard blow for me to stop with still weeks to go. Thus began the most difficult part of pregnancy for me. I know running is just one thing that I do , but stopping running after running pretty much every day for the past 15 years felt like losing a big part of wh
Post a Comment
Read more

The right amount of pregnant

Image
I am just over seven months pregnant and alternatively panic between worrying I don’t look pregnant enough or that I look too pregnant.  I kind of expected pregnancy to be awful--to feel tired and nauseous and uncomfortable for nine months. SURPRISE pregnancy has been generally kind to me. I mean, it’s definitely not my ideal state of being, but it hasn’t been the worst.  During my first trimester, I was in bed by 9pm (which is basically my dream life anyways), I had a week where I REALLY wanted hash browns/potatoes all the time, and I was able to keep running about 25 miles a week. The worst part was increasing sweating, which led to uncomfy heat rashes that haven’t really gone away but a dermatologist assured me they would after the baby comes. During the second trimester, I kept running the same amount despite rising humidity until that was rudely interrupted by a mild case of mono and I took a short break. Though I had a killer sore throat for a week, the mono turned out to not add
Post a Comment
Read more

Year Four and still more!

Image
I’m continuing to document my journey through graduate school ( click here for year 3 , year 2 , or year 1 if you missed them ), and this past year was an unusual one! Yes, that’s right, I’ve made it through four years of graduate school and I’ve still got more to go. At the beginning of the pandemic, I admit I didn’t mind the initial switch to all online classes so much. It added more flexibility to scheduling, and let’s be honest here--sometimes I just really appreciated not having to put on real pants or leave my house. At the end of this year though, I am looking forward to slowly getting accustomed to leaving my house again and seeing people as more than little boxes on Zoom. For a year that often felt like a black hole, a lot happened.  I spent last summer taking an intensive Hungarian course, reading a million books for my PhD qualifying exams in the fall, and moving into our new house. I entered the fall feeling a bit drained. I took my qualifying exams (known as “quals”) at t
Post a Comment
Read more