A coworker recently lost her elderly mother after the mom broke her hip in a fall, then suffered a heart attack after her surgery in the hospital. I wasn’t aware that her mother’s funeral was yesterday after work because I had taken Monday off for bedrest, so it was a surprise to discover we had after-work plans of such a nature. On the drive to the church funeral, Mr. W and I called his mother for her birthday. They (mom- and dad-in-law) were on speaker, and we were on speaker, so it was a 4-way conversation. We exchanged pleasantries, they asked about my shots and pregnancy, we joked around, and they said they were on the way to a steak dinner to celebrate MIL’s birthday. They asked where we were going; we told them to a funeral. =( I said they were the bright spot to the day before we went into something more solemn. In the church, the way the children, grandchildren, a neighbor and friend spoke about the coworker’s mom made me wish I’d known her. Even without ever knowing her, I aspired to be like her, but I’m a long shot off. I thought about how my kid(s) would see me as a person and a mother when I passed, how I wanted them to be able to say honestly, like this woman’s daughter did, “she always tried to do the right thing.” How they trusted her heart and her advice, her nurturing and open arms, and how this was the way she treated everyone from family to friends to strangers. And I thought about being irritated at my mom over an email she’d written me earlier last week, how I’d resolved to not respond because I was so offended, and then having Flip Flop Girl invest solid time over IM in the middle of the day to talk some sense into me. Everything Flip Flop Girl said made sense but I was too mad to budge, until her most effective line: “…but our parents are the only parents we have, and they mean well, you KNOW they do.” It suddenly struck me how hard it had been (somewhat recently) for Flip Flop Girl when she lost her own mother. And I finally took her advice and wrote my mom back a very detailed, patient, explanatory email about what’s going on. She still wrote me back something I found condescending, but maybe she thought the words in Chinese and it just didn’t translate well or something. Like Flip Flop Girl was trying to tell me, take into account the intent and not the delivery.
Toward the end of the coworker’s mother’s service, I had an odd sense of an elderly white-haired woman, face creased with the lines of over eight decades of smiles, coming to each person where we were sitting facing the pulpit. She walked down each aisle, back to the preacher and paying him very little attention, but focusing instead on the friends, family, and strangers, leaning down just a little (because she was small) to be almost level with our faces, her hands over ours, acknowledging each of us, welcoming all of us with complete joy and acceptance. As if she were hosting her own funeral and greeting guests. And then it struck me… “Mabell,” I asked her in my mind, “Would you like to connect with your daughter again?” Her daughter, my coworker, had made an attempt a couple of months ago to set up a private reading with Rebecca, but unexpected expenses came up and she had to defer to a later time. I think it would be a wonderful thing to buy her an hour with Rebecca when Rebecca’s next in town at the end of this month. My coworker was having a very hard time with the thought that her mother, her roommate, her best friend, was no longer physically in the next room. “Would you like that?” I asked the busy image of the older woman in a light-colored cotton nightgown-looking garment. But she had moved on to other guests. I think this will be just for my coworker.

I’m pretty lucky. I told college roommie Diana the other day that I lead a pretty charmed life, and I think I do. After gymming on Monday, Mr. W came home with an armful of two dozen yellow-orange roses (the petals were yellow, my fave, but had swirls and touches of orange, very pretty). “For my future baby’s mama,” he explained. Diana and I had chatted before about her seeing a far-along pregnant woman in a bikini, and how her then-boyfriend had seen nothing wrong with it, and she asked me for Mr. W’s opinion. He saw nothing wrong with it, either, although Diana and I couldn’t imagine ourselves pregnant and strutting in a bikini in public. Mr. W had been talking for months about taking artistic silhouette-y pregnancy photos of me, which I’d always stuck my tongue out about, but he was always starry-eyed about the whole deal, saying how “cute” it would be when my belly got that big and my belly button got pushed out (ew?). I get the sense that Diana’s Eric is of the same mind. I know a lot of women who have been weight-conscious most of their lives don’t see the body changes that come with pregnancy as beautiful; it’s a cliche that women feel “fat” and “ugly” and many are fearful that their husbands would wander toward a, um, less curvy idea of beauty when we are at our “largest.” But I have none of those fears with Mr. W; is he quite irrationally excited about what’s to come. I, of course, am not sure what to expect, and am considering getting a baby book so I can stay on top of doing the right exercises, eating the right things, looking for the right signs of baby’s health.

So far, pregnancy feels similar to any other time of PMS. I’m not overly bloated (I finally weighed myself, 121 lbs, so my maximum weight will be 145, which is still below my lifetime heaviest by a pound) and I’m not as cranky nor do I crave chocolate, but my breasts are tender and I have a few mild cramps a day. Mr. W says this may be the hormone drugs and not pregnancy at all. That’s true… last night’s Progesterone injection didn’t go so well. After he put the shot in, he drew back on the syringe a little to check for blood, as he’d done before. It’s to make sure he didn’t poke into a vein cuz the med is supposed to sit in my muscle, not my bloodstream. I heard him say, “Uh-oh, there’s blood!” I told him matter-of-factly the next steps that the nurse had explained and that I’d read multiple times on the injection instructions.
“Okay, pull it out, and we’ll just find a different spot. Change out the injection needle and screw on a new one. Put a cotton ball on the spot you just came out of, and you’re gonna have to re-swipe the area with alcohol before you inject again.” He couldn’t get a cotton ball on the site before blood was running down, exactly as it had the first day with the Pregnyl shot. The bleeding didn’t stop for awhile, which made me concerned that the first Pregnyl shot, when he’d forgotten to draw back on the plunger to check for blood return, had indeed been an intravenous injection. I hope nothing was affected from that. 🙁
Mr. W removed the needle, but asked what he ought to do with the blood filling up the top of the syringe. “It’s my own blood, just leave it, it’s fine,” I figured.
“But how will I know if I hit blood again? When I pull back I won’t be able to tell if it’s old blood or new blood.” Oh. Good point. While I was still pondering this quandary and trying to call a nurse friend while watching people injure themselves on “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Mr. W said, “Okay, I got it.” I guess he’d managed to squeeze out most of the blood. He found a new spot and this spot hurt worse than the former spot and I jerked involuntarily. But he reported, “Okay, no blood,” and completed the shot. The first hole was still bleeding, but the second was fine. And today, I feel like there’s a golf ball buried in my right butt muscle. But that was the worst thing that happened in my personal life all day, so yeah, I’m still pretty charmed.