34

i turned 34 this weekend.

i worked all day on saturday--the day of my birthday.

we went for beer at founders after working all day; it was yummy and we visited with good friends. we were in grand rapids.

k is still bleeding on and off. she is feeling sicker and sicker; i guess this is a good sign.

i have been reading like mad. i have been working so much that i turn off quickly when i come home by ducking my eyes and therefore my brain into a good book. I've read three kate delafield mysteries and one jane lawless mystery in the last week and a half and yesterday i read hood. yes, i am still on my "lesbian" fiction kick. I went through all the young adult lesbian novels at the whitaker branch library and now i have to get the other 4 i intend to read from the other branch. but in the meantime, i've been reading any other lesbianesque novel i can get my hands on. I go through these phases once in a while. these times when i cannot handle anymore straightness since it circulates around us like dandelions and grass and wind, essentially it is everywhere.

anyhow, it s just nice to read about two women finding peace and pleasure in one another. i like that. it helps take me away from the chaos of my working life and the stress of this living that is trying to happen in kk.

now, i am older--one year more notched out of the wooden trim lining the front door. now, i am hoping for longevity and limberness as this embryo unfolds into a child inside kk. i need strength. i need some bigger peace. i'll write about that more some other day.

my bleeding lover

This morning kk had another ultra sound at the repro clinic. The wee little embryo is still alive.

The heart was thumping--strong.

The doctor was just fantastic and I wish she could be my regular obgyn. Anyhow, we saw what's been causing the bleeding; it's a Subchorionic Hemorrhage. The doc explained that the gestational sack is like a cancer and it is burrowing deep into the womb and it disrupted a vessel which then pulled up blood and came out kk's vagina.

So, now she may bleed a bit more here and there. It will take some time to heal. Anyhow, it is toward the front of the sack and not very much of it is touching the thick wall surrounding the embryo.

Hopefully, there will be no more disruption and the wee thing will keep growing and a healthy pregnancy will ensue.

It is still a waiting game. A worry game. As the doctor said today, when the baby gets born and is out of the womb it is still all about wearing your heart inside out.

Very right.

In the meantime, I am trying to relax in the middle of a whirlwind of emotion...

i lied and at least there were baby bees

k is bleeding now. now she is bleeding. it is bright red blood. it sucks. no cramping, but bleeding.

I am so fucking over all of this I can barely handle it.

What really sucks is today after work I had one of the most amazing experiences of my whole life, and k was there and she video taped it all and then we came home and had friends and neighbors on the porch and then k went to the bathroom and blood--bright red blood was all over the mini pad and a clot hung heavy on the top of the toilet water.

and i got mad and kind of turned my back.

and i am still mad.

but today, today after work we--that is my friends t and l plus me--we collected the most beautiful and enormous wild bee hive from an outbuilding one half block away from my house. It was such good work.



K taped us in action (hopefully, video cuts will one day be up on this blog).

The three of us worked so efficiently and well together. T cut the comb with wire from the eaves of the house one luscious piece at a time. L and I carried it to a tarp and cut the excess off into empty frames and then made sure the comb was held in place with rubber bands. The forefront of the wild hive was empty comb. The center of the hive was brood with edges of honey. Unfortunately we had to slice through larvae in order to cut the comb to frame size; it was a creamy white, pollen infested massacre.

But, but. oh my god, but...
We saw baby bees being born.

It was really the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. The sweet wiggling heads of these finely formed insects busted with precision and grace out of their individual hexagonal larvae comb right before our eyes.

I witnessed three new lives surface from the mysterious depths of one of the most fascinating substances on earth--bee comb.

Their small bodies were pale yellow. Their legs were weak and clumsy--like new born goats trying to find footing.

We placed brood comb into the frames and then brushed hundreds of bees off of piece after piece of the large, undulating comb into the hive we were creating for them in place of their wild hive. There are more pictures to come, but later.

Did you know that a wild hive looks a bit like human female genita.lia?



It is lush and sensual and so full of life.



After the whole collection process, we came home and some of us drank beer and pizza was eaten. Then we went back to the hive spot and saw that the ladies were festering over the place where their other home had been so (without our strange, white, alienesque bee suits) t held a bucket up and scooped the remainder and I pulled the top off the super and he dumped them in and I closed the lid. We did this twice. We think the queen is in the new hive.

There are so many bees and the colony is so strong that even if we crushed her or she did not make it in, they would feed and build another...

At least there are bees being born amidst the bloody mess of stuff that keeps coming out of kk into our toilet.
at least.

staying alive

K has not bled in two days. Before those two days, it was mostly just pinkish brown spots.

I have this thing called caution tied around my neck; it is like a steel weight--a jacob marley style chain necklace tearing at my muscles turning sinew to rock. I am cautiously happy.

I keep seeing that wee spot--the flickering heart, the thud, thud, thud. It is something we've wanted so bad, but the path to this place where we are now has been littered with obstacles and heartache and the unknowing. All in all, we've had too much room, due to circumstances beyond our control and so totally in our control, to think about every move we've made before we've made it. We've pondered the ways to try to make it happen until pondering pounced all the life out of our own life-making ways.

My thought life around pregnancy and potential parenting has been too thick, too full, too vivid, too real. And now we just have to ride this wave of doubt and unknowing for a little longer. Except in reality we will always never know anything for sure. Well, I guess we do know that one day it's all going to end for each of us. One day that small beating heart inside kk's abdomen will no longer pump. Just like one day the strong, able heart of kk will cease and mine and yours will stop. We really just don't know when. I am hoping that all of our hearts keep that lush constant rhythmic quality for years and years to come. This of course includes that lovely little thistle seed heart rushing in the watery world of my beloved's womb.

Caution keep me close, weight of worry stop strangling my esophagus, hearts of the beloved community keep thumping to the pulse of the planet, day keep dawning, night keep falling, kid keep growing...stay alive, stay alive, stay alive...

the potential

Spring teaches us lessons. Lessons in watchfulness. Lessons in living now. Lessons in the fast fading of beautiful moments. Lessons in rebirth. Lessons in possibility. Lessons in the powerful potential for new life.

The potential.

It is hard for me to write about this. It is harder for me to think on it. I am trying to stay in the moment. I am striving for hope where I was not hopeful.

On Thursday, K felt a gush between her legs while she was at work. It was blood. It happened around 3:30.

I had been in Lansing all morning for a House hearing with AFSC's new staff (it was his very first day of work). The hearing had gone well. The day was hot, too hot for the season in Michigan. P, the new staff, and I drove back. I got home around 2:30ish. Grabbed food, grabbed my bicycle and put it on the car and drove down to the park and rode into work. I planned to park the car at the park so k and I could ride back to it around 9:00pm from a panel I was supposed to speak on in Ann Arbor.

I was sweaty when I got to work. Dripping cause it was 82 degrees on april 15 in Michigan. I planned to train P for about an hour and a half and then go to the event I was going to be speaking at when the phone rang and K said I'm having a miscarriage.

And then my heart sank. But it did not sink too much cause I had built foam and other soft substances around it. I know that a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I know that this struggle we have been going through is bigger than I am able to wrap my head around and I know it is a struggle. I do not take it as anything else.

Kk had called the repro clinic and they scheduled an ultra sound pronto for 9:00 am friday.

Back at my office where I had been standing dripping with sweat with a partially sinking heart, P instantly dropped everything and took me in his car over to K at her work. Where her boss and colleague had been there for her, supporting her, loving her amidst her tears.

We scooped K up and P took us to our car down in the park.

I drove quickly to the post office to purchase stamps I needed for work the next day, and then I took K home. Our dear friend R brought K a chocolate chip blizzard and some maxi pads. And then, our dear friend and no longer roommate but now neighbor, A, came to walk the pook with me. Later that night she also brought us yummy dahl for dinner.

We walked through an alley I had never discovered before in Ypsi. It is old and dirt and gravel and it feels right beneath human feet. It feels as though it has been tread on for 150 years. We stopped at P's to hand off the stamps I had purchased for the mailing that I would or would not be at work for the next day depending on what happened with K's ultra sound.

I stayed at P's place and A walked pook back home. I drank a cold beer with him in his new apartment, talked, and listened to dylan. He had moved in the day before. We found it together on Monday after a day of apartment hunting. It is a great pad. A good sized efficiency in a very old house with ultra high ceilings and access to two great porches.

It was calming to be sitting there and tuning out a little. But then I knew I had to get back to KK.

I walked home with a small buzz that comes from drinking a cold beer in hot weather as though it were a glass of water. I kicked dirt in the alley. I took in the magnificent green that beats through even the milkiest dusk. Because the green that accompanies the rousing of sleeping vegetation in spring, is different--more vivid, more elaborate than any other green. It glows with the pulse of life. it busts open with that which wants nothing more than to be alive.

When I got back to our house, our good friend G was there with K. She just happened to be in from florida to be with her ailing papa in windsor and was able to slip over the border to visit us and some other ypsi friends. It was perfect timing. Then our good friend N came over and we sat around catching up and three of us drank beers.

They left.

We went to bed.

In the morning, we drank coffee and drove on over to the repro clinic.

Some mother of some straight girl waiting in the waiting room gave us not too kind looks too many times as we sat there. So, I held K's hand tighter as we waited. I held her hand and rubbed her neck and displayed vigorous affection.

We waited and waited.

Then we were taken back to an exam room.

The boy doctor finally came in. Remember, my hope was not high. It was cushioned safely in the cottony confines of my chest.

He wanded K and then instantly said there it is with a strong beating heart. And, then my sweaty hand squeezed K's hand so tight and ghostly little fingers with a mind of their own seemed to rip out the foam and cotton and soft stuff that had been surrounding my own heart, and it became all bare and vulnerable and open.

That is what hope is like. It leaves you open for let down and pure disappointment. So, the 6 week 4 day old fetus has a strong heart beat. We heard it. We saw it. It was alive. Yesterday, it was alive. The blood indicates a threatened miscarriage.
So, k's taking it easy. They tell us the blood could have been from anything. There is still some blood. We can do nothing but wait.

Now, I have this raw heart. This open heart. This heart that saw the beating heart of a little seed.

It is spring. There are many lessons in all the potential bounty. There are reminders of the cycles of life all around us. There are the trees coming back to life and the compost breaking down what once was alive into stuff that will be full of goodness and the potential for even more newness. There are two of us waiting intently for a heartbeat to stay strong. We are counting on spring.

I am learning about hope.

prayers working...for realz...

to those of you who know us in person, please do not take offense to the fact that you may have not heard this directly from us first. this is blog world and a large part of the reason i ever started this blog was to blabber incessantly about this trying to get pregnant that has consumed portions of our lives for the last three years.

i've laid off on the posting about trying, cause it was all starting to drive me a bit mad. i was getting brittle.

and brutal to my own heart. putting effort into something without any results, well, it can get old and tiresome after a bit.

Anyhow, k has been taking femara the last two cycles. it is an estrogen blocker and it makes her eggs develop in a more identifiable way or some shit like that. so the first month did not work.

it just made k strange and emotional.

this month she went in for the ultra sound to detect eggs on day 10 of her cycle instead of day 14. she was almost ready, so then on day 12 she went back and there were some eggs about ready to fall. so she had the trigger shot and we opted out of an iui this month and did a home injection the next evening.

anyhow, then last thursday she peed on a stick and it said, not pregnant. and we were like we knew it...

...it just is not ever gonna happen. the doctor at the clinic acted like it was a for sure thing because of the super positive response to the femara. and we were like ha, she does not know this journey we've been on.

Anyhow, on tuesday k was spotting; on wednesday she called the repro clinic to ask if she should start the femara when she started full on flowing at day three or when she count day three from the spotting day. and then k was like maybe i should check a pregnancy test again just in case and the nurse was like ya do so.

so, k did. and it said pregnant and we were both like no fu.cking way.
we were in total disbelief. then the repro clinic said go for a blood draw, so she did and later that afternoon it said she was pregnant, too.

And so my kk is pregnant. for the very first time in her life, she is pregnant.

I am keeping hope in check cause we know the whole fiasco with me and my pregnancy. she is ultra early on. and she could easily miscarry, so hope is in my back pocket. it gets sat on daily and ground into my ass. simultaneously, i am trying to stay optimistic and send the little spot that is growing inside her lots of good energy.

cause really i am not sure i can go through the whole losing it again thing...argh.
pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles for another 8 weeks.

argh.

and good.

last month when the femara did not work, I prayed so hard for my kk to get pregnant. I prayed to that which i do not know, i prayed to that which i think i know, i prayed to the tops of the branches of trees and the sun in the cool spring air; i prayed with cawing of the crows and the soft rush of river water. i prayed that she, my love--my sweet beloved--could have this one thing she wanted so deeply.

and maybe this prayer was heard in the rambling of the rest of our days. maybe it was heard on the tight teeny molecular structure of wind and rain. maybe just maybe, we will be parents 9 months from now.

praying for stickage and all good things.