SomethingInMyEye

Newsweek Stillbirth article

2009-02-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.newsweek.com/id/182572

It's kinda weird that they mention northern VA & Ann Arbor- my two homes!

It's nice to see some media attention on the topic; as I said in my last post, losing your baby before she's born is such an awful experience and I don't think people are really aware of it, or how common it is, even in the U.S. I've talked with so many moms online who have all had top-notch medical care, like me, and they lost their babies with no warning and are left with no explanation. Imagine being told that your newborn or toddler died suddenly and no on can tell you why. It's not really that different. Once you've seen your baby squirm around on the monitor, heard her heartbeat, and felt her little movements, you can't just shrug off losing her.

2009-01-29T17:13:00.000-08:00

On the plus side, I have a wedding in the works (although you can put that in the negative column as well, since we've been running into so many problems), I'm almost done with law school, and I'm overall pretty satisfied with life- oh, and I started going to daily Mass- let's hope that sticks.

On the minus side, I have not recovered from my miscarriage (emotionally) nearly as well as I thought I would. Every time I find out a friend is pregnant (which is about every 2 weeks) I feel a stabbing pain that just won't go away. And my doctor did all the testing he could and I got my last lab results back and there's no evidence of autoimmune or clotting problems. There's no evidence of ANY problems. I lost a baby in the second trimester- it happens in less than 1% of pregnancies- and no one can tell me why. If I were a saint, I wouldn't need closure. I try to just accept it as God's will and look ahead to the future, but it's kind of a bummer that any pregnancy I ever have for the rest of my life will be classified "high risk." I wanted (and still do!!!) a dozen children- maybe more! But as I watch everyone around me have healthy pregnancies and probably take for granted the common belief that once you get past your 1st trimester you're out of the woods (I'm never falling for THAT one again), it dawns on me anew, like a sickly fever, that maybe I have been singled out to lose children before I can even hold them. That might be my lot in life and I can't imagine a lot I'm less suited for. I can't help but wonder, when se new moms around me, why does God want HER to have a baby and not me? It would be one thing if I never got pregnant in the first place, but if He gave me a baby, why take her away so soon? Why do those babies get to live and not mine? I had a strong, strong fear, during the 4 months I carried that baby (and the fifth month, when I carried her lifeless body) that something would go wrong....
Well I'm just rambling now, but let this be a lesson to you, because I didn't know till it happened to me: miscarriage is not something you "get over." So if you know someone who's had one, don't ever think she's stopped grieving. The mothers on my miscarriage support board voice a constant theme- people assume that just because your baby wasn't born alive that your grief should cease soon after, and so many mothers end up having to grieve alone, which makes it so much worse.
I'm luckier than many, since I have at least a couple people who still ask me how I'm doing and have some inkling of how isolating it is to constantly see successful pregnancies. But I still need some sort of outlet where I can say whatever I want about my baby and my fears and hopes for the next ones. So maybe that's what my blog will become.

2008-11-24T10:45:00.001-08:00

Click below to read a very funny story about a man who tried (very hard) to pay his utility bill with a drawing of a spider.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=665847

2008-11-10T16:07:00.001-08:00

Friday nights and Silk cuts
Spilled espresso grounds
Echoes from the mountains
Stillness all around

Santa Anas, smoke rings
Distant piano keys
And on any given bench you’ll find
A dog-eared Thucydides

Brogues and bohrans both
Out only once a week
Stand closer to the fire
I want to watch you speak

Et in Arcadia ego
Et in Arcadia tu
You might have guessed it all would end
But I’m glad I never knew.

Lip My Stocking!

2008-09-22T15:31:00.001-07:00

So I've been looking at cheap wedding dress sites, and i found one called light in the box, and I realized that everything's from China and then I read a customer testimonial. It was from a guy named "ray," apparently from the U.S., since there was a little American flag next to his name. This is what he had to say about this wholesale merchandise website.

"i received this phone about 1 week ago. and i showed it to many friends of me. when they look at it, they thought it's a pack of cigarettes, but then i let them know it actually is a phone, they laughed a lot . it has kind of feeling like that shoe phone in that movie GET SMART. so as a funny thing i think i like it."

But wait- there's more!

Diana Aguirre from Tennessee apparently said: "So fast shipping and excellent service.”

Darren Ennis from the UK says: “Excellent value for money & very fast delivery considering it came from china - very recommended.”

Someone from Canada said: “great oparator it help me a lot on thinks that I wanted to know”

Hmmmm..... I think I'll go back to combing through ebay's selections now....

It Figures....

2008-09-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

... that the class I'm doing the best in is the one I had opted to do pass/fail.

Heat

2008-08-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, call me a nutjob, but when I heard this on the radio (I have no CD player, much less MP3) on Sunday, driving in the sweltering heat w/o A/C in my car, I really really liked it-the whole broadcast. It's the one entitled "Heat." I've never heard the pangs of summer put so well before..... maybe I'll listen again when it starts snowing up here in a few weeks....

http://hearingvoices.com/stories.php

PS I still think NPR is ridiculous, but for some reason, I loved this one.

2008-08-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

My administrative law professor just said, I think seriously, that Truman is his favorite president. Oh, brother.

Let's not let this one go ignored

2008-08-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/08/26/michelle-obamas-only-hope-is-that-people-forget-about-what-she-once-said-about-her-vision-of-america-and-instead-focus-on-her-uplifting-message-from-last-night/

I wanted to reprint the whole thing, but I was concerned about copyright infringement. Basically, Michelle vacillates between what a great country this is and how the system is trying to screw everyone. I understand how a person can say that the people in this country are generally good but the government is flawed, etc., but she says outrageous things like "Don't get sick in America." Tell that to the 90%+ of the world who get much worse healthcare than we do. Bitch should be grateful America has so many medical resources. Also, let's not forget that she said she had NEVER BEEN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN until her hubby ran for president. What an abomination. Can you imagine Nancy or Mary Todd or, hell, even Hillary saying something that unpatriotic?

update

2008-08-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

So I heard back about my baby's genetics testing, and it turns out
1) she's a Girl! I knew it! (although others had temporarily talked me into thinking she was a he)
2) she was perfectly healthy (i.e., right number of chromosomes and so forth) which means, it really was just a freak cord accident and extremely unlikely to happen again.
So, I have to change what I've been calling her in my head from Joseph to Catherine- I hope she doesn't mind that I've been calling her the wrong name!
But where she is, I don't think anything bothers her (;

PS- I know I ought to be uber happy that she would have been a healthy baby, but in a sense it isn't very comforting, you know? But we have to take the good with the bad. Everything for a reason. And one day I'll either know the reason or be so divinely happy that I won't care.

What's another word for jackass?

2008-08-11T11:14:00.001-07:00

Yesterday at work (at the pharmacy) I was wearing the button Loryn got me a long time ago, an American flag and underneath is written: "Peace- Something to shoot for"
Har dee har har
Over the years I have gotten some reactions to that pin, mostly people reading it out loud, and laughing slightly, which, I hope, means they got the double meaning.
But yesterday a particularly chatty & annoying middle-aged man noticed it and said "Don't you think that pin is a little, uh, .... uh.... "
I helped him out. "Patriotic?" I suggested.
"No, not that..... don't you think it's wrong to have 'peace' and 'shoot' in the same sentence?"
Truth be told, I did not care to have a debate with this obnoxious person, especially at work, so I played dumb.
The idiot went on to say, "Why not 'aim for,' or, 'strive for'?"
"Those are all synonyms though, aren't they?" I replied innocently. "Aim, strive, shoot. It's all the same, isn't it? Isn't peace something to shoot for?" I smiled a wide have-a-nice-day smile and the man drifted away slowly, clutching his prescription bag (full of xanax, actually), mulling it over in his tiny brain.

2008-08-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry if my last post was a big ol' shock to everyone. Someone recently told me that more people read my blog than I think, and, well, I assumed that Maggie & Loryn were the only ones who ever checked it out at all. I wouldn't have posted all that so abruptly if I had any idea other people read it. I had only posted it at all because Loryn's not on facebook & I wanted her to be able to see the pics if she wanted.
So..... sorry if it seemed, um, inappropriate or something.
As long as I'm here I'll just say real quick that I'm doing a lot better, emotionally. I was really really really sad when I posted the pics, as you can tell. But after a week or so I was able to master a mantra: "Nothing will bring the baby back- go on with your life!" Maybe it sounds cold, but it's really not. It was like I was peering into this half-crazy self-pitying abyss and I had to jump back really fast before it sucked out a year or more of my life. If crying all day and shutting myself up in my room maybe COULD bring back my little Joseph Gerard, you can bet your booties I'd be giving it a shot. But it can't, so I made myself return to normal as much as I could.
Alright, gotta run now. Thanks everyone- I feel like it was easier to move on having so many prayers and kind wishes to support me! XOXO

My Baby

2008-07-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Well, the few of you that read my blog already know about my recent tragedy. On July 3, I went in for a 20 week ultrasound (very excited because I brought Alan with me & we were going to find out the sex- plus he had never seen the baby move like I had, so I couldn't wait for that). After 15 minutes of taking u/s pictures, they told me that the baby had died, probably at about 17 weeks.

The following Monday I delivered the baby at 10:03 pm and that Friday we buried the baby in a cemetery.

We don't know the sex yet (too undeveloped to tell, but my doctor thinks it was a boy). The baby was 7.5 inches and weighed 3.2 oz. He most likely died from the cord being wrapped around his neck. The chances of that happening in the 2nd trimester are about 1 in 10,000. We're still waiting for the tests done on the baby's DNA and the placenta, so we'll know what to expect the next time. Those are the bare-boned facts. I won't include, for now, how unbelievable depressed I am when I think about my tiny little baby dying inside me and I didn't know and couldn't help even if I had known. Or the horror of spending 16 hours in the labor and delivery wing of a hospital, waiting to deliver your dead child whom you spent months looking forward to and loving. Maybe I'll save that for another time.

I don't think the pics above are really graphic (I have others of the baby in more detail, and while it's not that bad, I don't want to subject my baby to so much exposure on the internet.) Suffice to say, everything was there and in tact, and the only "grossness" was that the baby had been dead for a couple weeks so the bones had shifted a bit and the skin was disolored. He didn't even small bad, since the amniotic fluid had preserved him. His hands and feet were so perfect- right down the nails. The eyes, the nose, the mouth- even the little biceps- everthing was there but in miniature.

I don't want to leave this post on too sad a note. I'm doing ok and my family & Alan have been good to me. I'm taking it "one day at a time." (I never understood that phrase till now). I have to keep reminding myself, though, that little Joseph Gerard/Catherine Hope is in God's care now, and that's even better than my care. I don't know how the lack of baptism plays a role, but I might as well assume that God will let my baby in heaven, since thinking otherwise won't help anything and will drive me mad. So, here's my tiny baby.

2008-02-18T14:07:00.000-08:00

2 posts in less than a month... I kick ass.

I am once again pondering whether I really want to be a lawyer. It's becoming more & more a reality that I will have to deal with and I don't know if I'm up for the stark unromantic majority of what I will have to do. I don't want to spend my days looking up shit on westlaw or lexis and preparing motions. I want what the movies & tv shows & books promised me. I need to find a niche in the legal field that will allow me to do that. Maybe if I carry around a little tape player (or ipod mayhaps) with the DUM-DUM new-scene sound of law & order and I play that every time I get bored as a lawyer it will make it seem more fun.
The scary truth is I've always assumed I'd be a good lawyer, but I really have no reason to be sure of that. Deep down I wanted to do something artsy or literary, you know, like writing books. But I thought that would be a waste- the easy way out. I wanted to contribute something you can sink your teeth into, like successful lawsuits, not some namby pamby novel to junk up the shelves at barnes & noble while deep down I would prefer people to read real classics rather than my book. It's like forcing yourself to eat your green beans and hope you have room for the ice cream afterwards. As Marotti said, inside every lawyer is a failed poet.

2008-01-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Too true, too true. I'm very sorry. It wasn't until I saw that Emma had my blog under a heading called "The Morgue" that I decided to do something about it.
Well, I'm halfway thru law school, and my GPA just went from about a 2.75 (first year) to about a 3.41 (last semester), although taken both together I'm just barely cracking a 3.0, which is great, because that means I can actually put my GPA on my resume, like NORMAL people. Speaking of which, if any of you know any lawyers in the DC/Northern VA area, please let me know. I'm nervous b/c this summer I'll have to actually get a real legal job and actually contribute something helpful, which I'm not sure I can do.
What else?..... Well... I'm still keeping up a long-term relationship of more than a year. Which, given my track record, is amazing. And the best thing about Alan is he keeps forgivving me every time I blow up and say something spiteful. I wish I could be more like that. Although, he doesn't provide me an opportunity to be forgiving really, because there's so little to forgive him for.
Is this all too personal? I've forgotten how to blog, to be honest and I don't want to bore you too much.....
I miss all you people out in CA and am so jealous of your sunshine and fresh air. I really want to come out again for graduation but I dunno....
Well, time to be productive. Now that I finally remembered my password, I'll be posting more & hopefully better posts too. I love you!!!

2007-09-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

At Loryn's prompting, I shall try to resurrect this blog. I shall begin by recommending Flight of the Conchords, an HBO show/musical duo.

2007-08-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Here I am at Ave again. I'm sorry my sporadic posts have been so unenlightening. Will do better later.

2007-07-22T13:25:00.001-07:00

Still alive.

zach galifiankis

2007-04-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

My favorites are the Chuck E Cheese & Axe quotes. (He's a burly, bearded man with slightly crazy eyes). He's in the fiona apple video I posted below.

"You know you're an alcoholic when the bartender knows your name... and you've never been to that bar before."
"Three years ago my sister was diagnosed with multiple personalities, and there's nothing funny about that. But she phoned me the other day...and my caller ID exploded."
"I wish there was a morning after pill for Denny's Moons over My Hammy."
"When you look like I do, It's hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese."
"That show 'The Amazing Race'- is that about white people?"
"I would start a revolution, but... I just bought a hammock."
"I want to move to India or Pakistan, and become a cab driver."
"My name's Zach Galifianakis... I hope I'm pronouncing that right."
"I just released a DVD. It's selling like whatever the opposite of 'hotcakes' is."
"At what age do you tell a highway it is adopted?"
"I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day in my fort."
"I want to open up a store for cross-dressers. I'll call it 'Susan B. Anthony'"
"I wear a lot of Axe bodyspray, but I live in a black neighborhood and it's called Ask. And if you don't get that you're not racist."

2007-04-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

2007-03-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

ASSumptions

2007-03-23T07:27:00.000-07:00

When you're a young person living in A2, the assumption is you go to U of M. So if you meet someone at a bar or what-have-you, and he asks what you're studying and you say law, the assumption is UofM. Fact is, it's a bit embarrassing to explain, "oh, no, there's actually a nice little law school across the street from U of M- that's where I go. What's it called? Um, Ave Maria. . . Well, it was founded by the founder of Domino's. . . uh, yeah, he has a lot of money and he just wanted to found a law school I guess. . . " Things get weird fast b/c, as all U of M students are eager to tell you, they have never heard of Ave. It literally is not even on the map, although groceries stores and some gas stations literally are.

I went to the dentist a couple weeks ago & I was a tad late & the last appt of the day so I didn't want to take up their time. The dentist was an old man who I initially liked b/c he kept telling me that I have beautiful teeth. Later I didn't like him as much b/c he took advantage of my inability to speak while he was cleaning my teeth, telling me, a propos of nothing, that we shouldn't be in Iraq. But I digress.

As he prepared the instruments he asked me if I'm a student. Yes, I say. What's my field of study? I'm a first-year law student, I say nervously, b/c the follow-up to that is going to take a long time. But I didn't get the chance to give my lame explanation of where I go to school. He got all excited and started shouting how brilliant I must be to have gotten in to UofM law and how hard a school that is to get into and did I know that it's a top ten for law and wowee zowee I must be smart and hard-working and I'm going to go places in life now that I'm a law student at UofM. Now he's whistling and handing me a rinse cup and I sigh, considering whether it would even be worth it to correct his assumption. But instead I take the rinse cup and say "Thank you."

2007-02-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

Q. What do you do when you find out you have about $1,000 less in your bank account than you thought?

A. You go shopping. For hours and hours.

2007-02-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

I am currently listening to Smooth Criminal & am realizing that the lyrics and the whole idea behind this song are really very bizarre. But then again look who wrote it.

It's Not About Love

2007-01-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

It probably cost $25 to make this video & yet it's one of the most amusing music videos I've ever seen. And the song is delightful.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=krTE0AJkqj4&mode=related&search=