Take This Maira Kalman!

My due date has come. My due date has gone. My due date has come and gone. My doctor has vanished like a rabbit from a magician's hat and who knows what will happen next.

I live in a bubble. My husband works very hard all day and most nights. When he is finished working, sort of, he comes to my bed side, closes his eyes and melts into a sleep-like state. He spends approximately six minutes telling me that he has no desire to jog or go to the gym and then, finally, he goes. When he returns, he diligently, though lovelessly, rubs my aching lower back until his hand hurts and proceeds to read a magazine and then falls asleep. It is unlikely that we exchange twenty words a day lately. Yet, he loves me and I love him. Sometimes, he tells me about a work project but most of the time he says he is trying to figure something out. A lot of numbers go through his head and I don't understand anyway, so I am probably not his best sounding board although I try.

I have no desire to cook any food. I am tired of chicken and beef. I don't really eat pork. I am not a great cooker of fish although I do find lobster, crab, and shrimp rather tasty. I would be content with a can of chocolate icing and a spoon. Sometimes, I wander to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, open the pantry, stare at all the contents and leave. At more motivated times, I will cook lavishly. I enjoy watching my husband eat meals I have made because he is a kind and grateful eater. These are not motivated times. Today, I am struggling to even put on clothes and go outside.

We are out of showering soap and garbage bags. The bathroom trashcan needs to be emptied. There is folded laundry to put away. These boring tasks await me yet I will not do them until I can't stand it any longer. Housework never ends.

Everytime I take a shower, there is a knocking sound on the tile. It is creepy. There are workmen next door and they are renovating the house. But a shower is not the place one wishes to hear knocking. Generally, it is a good place to be left alone. I want to scream at them "Fuck OFF." I could because they would not hear me. I wish they would finish and leave. Their noises will not be good for a newborn baby should one decide to arrive.

I have a serious candle wax problem. I enjoy burning candles. Especially when I find one that smells yummy of say lemons and cloves, I like to burn the candle all day long. At some point though, the wax will spill all over. I have destroyed several pieces of furniture this way, not to mention Belly, my stuffed bear, and platypus, both vicitms to neighboring candle wax accidents. I can't seem to help myself. I enjoy the quiet light and the smell. My Big Book of Stain Solutions hasn't really panned out all that well and the best solution I've discovered is simply to scrape the dried wax off of the furniture or animal. But there are traces of my crimes.

When I have energy, I go outside to be a part of the world. The world is not waiting for a baby. Only I am. Well, and my immediate circle and perhaps a few co-workers. The world though, carries on. It makes for a strange merging, when I am in it as I don't quite belong. Then again, when I sit around the house going slightly mad, I feel hostile and begin to hate the world I'm avoiding.

There is nothing worse than nighttime when the baby kicks me and I cannot breathe. Sometimes I sleep but many nights I can't. It makes me hate everyone who sleeps. She is very large at this point and has taken over the upper half of my body. It feels a little as though we are in a battle for my body. We can no longer both have it, but we are in a bit of a tug of war over it. I am hoping to win and by doing so, convince her to leave and join us in the real world. She doesn't seem convinced though. I am trying not to get mad at her for keeping us all on hold, but sometimes I do.

Once in awhile, I find myself thinking that I will die during some fluke in labor. Part of this fear is the thought that it happens to someone, that person probably doesn't expect it either and it happens more in this country than in others. If it does happen, how pitiful that these days are not treasured as they should be. While I am attempting to step back, be grateful for the peace and the quiet, a certain level of anxiety and frustration prevent that from happening entirely. A trip to the beach and a strawberry colada would certainly help. But if these do happen to be my last days, let me state for the record that I know my better half will be an excellent parent and that I love him so. He is my truly, truly even when I want to strangle him.
Perhaps throttle.

There is a lovely orange piece of paper hanging over our bed which I made for our wedding. It contains envelopes holding marital advice from some of our couple friends who have enjoyed their marraiges for many years. It is falling apart and will break soon if we don't make an effort to preserve it. We have yet to read a single word of advice although this may be a good time to dip in. When I made it, I was thinking about how hard it is for people to commit and stay happy in a long term relationship. No one ever claimed that marraige is easy. I figured we could use all the advice anyone has to offer. Now, I see it more as a reminder. A reminder of the years as they will pass slowly before us. But if it should break, I would be sad and see it as a bad sign. I am a bit superstitious that way.

When I really get going, I fear that my unborn daughter hates me and is trying to kill me by choking me to death. I fear she will be a mass murderer and kill us in our sleep. I am perfectly capable of fantastical dramas, delusions, and madness. This is why it is better when I have the energy to be in the world. The world is less dangerous than my head.

the more things change, the more they stay the same

six months. It's ben six months since I got muddy with the Western fertility witch docs. For six months, I've monitored my doctor, spritzed myself with good smells, tried to fit in yoga and the occasional breathing class, taken herbs, regulated my sugar intake, gone "au natural." In six months, I've managed to reset my clock, to actually have cycles without the use of modern medicine. Sure, they take twice as long as those thirty day perfect people, but they take place, leave me with a whopping headache and indicate some hint of fertility possibilities. Enough to make me contemplate the possible.

But in that six months, I've turned 35 and no matter how diligent I am with the temperature taking at 6 a.m. daily, the "do it for your country" fornication according to the calendar...despite all of our best efforts, I remain childless.

So, as per the agreed upon time frame, I called the doctor in late February to start the paperwork rolling to try to pump myself full of crap by April.

Except of course that it never works out that way. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I called the clinic in February to get the insurance papers rolling. But they said that my blood work had expired and that there was nothing that I could do until I got my next period.

My period came on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning I went to the local clinic to have all the blood work that the clinic needed. It was snowing. The previous evening, I'd been out until midnight taking a group of my students to see "Hamlet" performed by the Wooster group. We'd had a lovely time, but my six a.m. alarm was hard to obey. I left the house by 6:30 and walked as quickly as I could in the snow to get to the clinic so that when it opened at 7, I would be the first patient and still have a fighting chance to get to work by 8. Except of course that the clinic didn't open on time because snow = excuses.

When the woman finally did arrive to open the clinic and let me in, she proceeded to moan about my paper work and how it wasn't filled out correctly by the doctor. She made a few phone calls muttering that it was much too early for this sort of thing and that she wasn't supposed to be working that day any way, she was doing the clinic a favor because another worker had called in sick. She said the codes on the forms were not done properly and that she was not doing them a favor and this work would be processed manually. Whatever that meant.

Her oversized co-worker arrived moments later complaining that she could not find an overcoat that fit. This did not surprise me in the least. They chatted at length about how awful the company was not to provide overcoats that fit. Too much material I thought.

She went on for awhile about how it was just a j-o-b and told me to wait in the second waiting room on the right. She came in and took 12 viles off the shelf which was when I started to breathe rather quickly. She said, "great and to top it off, your a nervous one. Look, your hands are cold and if you are going to be nervous I'm going to have to stick you three times. Don't you know if you want to have a baby you have to relax?" I tried to visualize the yellow traingle. The peaceful scent of jasmine and lavendar. But she wouldn't go away. I took deep breaths and she was still there telling me that the only way I would ever have a baby was if I relaxed. Finally, it was over. I ran out of the clinic and got to work, late.

My blood work didn't arrive to the clinic on time and when it finally did come, it turned out that the doctor was on vacation. Now, I have to decide if I go for another round of IVF around my spring break and miss some days at the end of the vacation to finish out the cycle, or if I hold off again until summer.

I'm visiting with another doctor to see what he says. But as the nurse warned me, they are two very different people, and likely to say two very different things.