Brie Fit

As you can probably tell by yesterday’s post, my natural miscarriage started yesterday and is still going on today.

In a way, I feel a bit relieved.  I’m happy my body recognizes that this is not a viable pregnancy and is doing its thing.   And it represents the real end, rather than the excruciating waiting we endured last week.  And the end means that a new beginning is just around the corner, right?

In the midst of everything…we were offering, and counter-offering on a house.

I’m happy to say we are now under contract, and if the inspection goes well (we hope we hope we hope), we will close on November 30th.

We’ll hopefully get our inspection this weekend, and if so, I’ll follow the inspector around taking better pictures. 

It’s a lovely house.  We’ll have:

• 3 bedrooms
• 2 fake bedrooms (in the finished basement, but can’t be counted because there’s no windows)
• 3 baths (two full, two half)
• 4,000 square feet (I’m going to need a cleaning lady, holyshit)
• two neighbor dogs, who appear to be outside dogs and a little barky, which worries me a tiny bit
• A small deck and patio
• A dead tree that needs to come out of the back yard
• A giant finished basement
• A kitchen with COUNTER SPACE!
• An easily-wiped down electric range
• Really ugly wallpaper in our downstairs bath and laundry room
• Dated brass light fixtures and doorknobs
• A shorter commute to work
• A shorter commute to CrossFit

So, as you can tell, there’s a lot of good to the house, but we will need to be sprucing some things up.  (Seriously, the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom…it’s like an acid trip.)

The offer process was kind of maddening, as the sellers were pretty much unwilling to negotiate.  I just hope they’re a little kinder when it comes to making repairs after the inspection.  Ugh.

In other good news, I slept fairly normally last night, have something of an appetite back, and shaved my legs today.  Baby steps.  I’m thinking I’ll go back to work on Wednesday.  I think, by then, the physical worst will be over, and emotionally, I will be able to handle it. 

Baby steps, right?  It’s good to have something different to think about, anyway. 

We love you so much.

We found out you existed on September 10th, 2011. 

We were on cloud nine until October 26th, when we found out you were gone.  For forty-six days, we were your mom and dad and we did everything we could to protect you.  On October 30th, we miscarried naturally at home.

We called you Omar.  As in, “Omar comin’, yo,” from The Wire. 

We bought you a Mizzou onesie.

You liked pretzels, and cheese, and lemonade.  You did not like meat, or fruit-flavored things AT ALL. 

Every night, we prayed together that God would watch over you and help you grow and be healthy.  I don’t know why He didn’t answer those prayers, but I have to believe He has a plan.  What else is there?

You gave me bizarre acid reflux and hormonal crying fits and giant boobs.  I napped every day.

Your dad liked to pat my belly and look at me all wide-eyed, like “I can’t believe this is real.”  For once, I felt like I was doing something important.

I thought you were a boy, but your dad just knew you were a girl.  We’ll never find out who was right.

We talked about how blessed we were all the time.  We had had a rough summer, baby, and within the span of three weeks, we had turned our life into exactly what we’d always dreamed of: amazing jobs, buying a house, pregnant with our first baby.  You were the answer to a whole lot of prayers.

Thank you for letting us know how ready we are to be parents.

Thank you for showing us our unbounded ability to love.

Goodbye, baby.  You’ll be with us always.

• We made an offer on a house today.  We were going to before we lost the baby, and decided to proceed.  The sellers have counteroffered, so we’re going to…counter-counteroffer?  Whatever it is, I hope they accept—we love the house a lot.  (But it did sting a little today seeing what would have been the baby’s room.  But Tim reminded me we will put a baby there.  Someday.)
• I am angry.  I feel like this miscarriage is going to suck a lot of the joy out of any future pregnancies I may have.  I hate that I’ll be ten times more anxious going forward, and that I’ll never be able to listen to the “just relax”es, or trust my body to take care of a fetus again.
• I am having a lot of trouble with sleeping and eating.  I’ve lost five pounds since Wednesday.  I don’t know if I’m still having pregnancy food aversions (not fair) or if it’s grief, but food sounds mostly repulsive to me.  And I can’t fall asleep before 3 am.
• I feel like a lot of women who have miscarriages err on the side of being extra-private about subsequent pregnancies because they don’t want to have to “un-tell” people if something happens.   I feel the opposite, I think.  While I’ll be absolutely heartbroken if we lose another baby, I almost want to tell everyone right away when I get pregnant again.  Un-telling is hard, yeah…but the amazing support that has come out of un-telling has been well worth it.  The more I think about it, the more stupid it seems—why does having a miscarriage have to be a secret?  Should I be ashamed?  Why do I have to hide this?  Last time I checked, when someone important to you dies, you don’t frantically scramble around to keep people from finding out.  The whole premise of keeping pregnancy a secret just seems absurd to me now.
• Tim’s feeling much better.  Whatever he had was some violent 24 hour bug that has, thankfully, passed.  I’m glad I have someone to hug again, and I’m looking forward to getting back into my own (sanitized, washed, and dried) bedding tonight. 
• Nothing’s happening yet.  Please, just let this nightmare end.

File this under things that are just so randomly cruel you want to commit murder.  Or laugh hysterically.

Tim came down with the stomach flu last night. 

So, while I’m in the process of waiting to miscarry our baby, I can’t hug or touch or sleep in the same bed as my husband.   I spent most of the night on the couch with Milhouse and Southie.  At least he cleans up after himself pretty well?  Poor guy is miserable. 

I just bought out Hy-Vee’s stock of Gatorade and Lysol.

If this is God’s way of sending a distraction, I would have preferred winning the lottery, thanks very much.

I couldn’t sleep last night.  Every time I closed my eyes, I would start to cry all over again.  So I stayed up, Googling things I shouldn’t be Googling, until I couldn’t keep my eyes open and knew I’d fall asleep instantly.

I had bad dreams and kept waking up.  It kind of sucked.  I wish I had sleeping pills.

Today, I just feel kind of numb.  I don’t have an appetite.  I ALWAYS have an appetite.  The only thing that sounds remotely appetizing is cake.

Nothing has started yet.  I’m giving my body until Monday; if nothing happens, we move on to medical intervention.  I hope we don’t have to resort to that, but I also don’t want to drag this out for more than a week.  For now, we wait.  I am glad I have lots of sick time built up at work—I plan to use it generously.

I keep touching my belly and flinching, remembering that there’s nothing there.

I’m still having pregnancy symptoms, which is just cruel.  The heartburn, the reflux, the food aversions…still there.  I just want it all to go away.

Things that have been keeping me sane:

• Tim.  He’s stayed home from work and is a rock.
• Our pets.  Buckley, in particular, put aside his usual jerky demeanor and purred on my chest for a good twenty minutes this morning.

• Frasier on Netflix.  It’s such a funny show, and I haven’t watched it for ages.  It makes me smile.  I desperately want to watch Gilmore Girls right now, but since we canceled cable and it’s not on Hulu Plus or Netflix streaming I’m SOL.
• Cleaning.  My kitchen looks fabulous.  Scrubbing things feels good.
• Starting to reread one of my favorite mindless books for the millionth time.  It’s like an old friend.
• The “this happened to my wife/mom/friend/cousin, but then they had ten healthy babies” stories.  They give me so much hope.

We’re still thinking of putting an offer in on a house this weekend.  Our agents know what is going on, and we’re meeting with them on Saturday.  The real estate market doesn’t wait, unfortunately, and I think having a new project to focus on will be good.

I miss CrossFit, but I’ve been instructed to “take it easy” on myself until this is over.  I can’t wait to take this all out on some weights.

I am ready to move on.  I want this nightmare to be over and I want to focus on waiting one cycle and then making a baby that we will one day hold in our arms.

(Beautiful flowers from my best friend and the in-laws.)

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers—I hope you don’t mind if I blog this experience out a bit, though it’s not exactly the normal subject matter of Brie Fit.  It does help to work all these thoughts out in text form, you know?

Today I was supposed to shock the hell out of all of you guys and let you know that I’m 10.5 weeks pregnant.

I bought a shirt, even.  Okay, two shirts.

I’ve been blogging furiously since September 10th, and saving posts as drafts, planning to make a big reveal and then hit publish. 

I was going to tell you about how I found out in a hotel room in Toronto, and bought a bunch of ridiculous French pregnancy tests because I thought they were adorable.

I’ve had nausea, and exhaustion, and giant, painful boobs. 

I quit coffee and Diet Coke and wine and box jumps cold turkey.  I took prenatal vitamins the size of a golf ball.  I neglected the blog because it was hard to keep a secret, and half the time, I felt like crap anyway.

Except today there was no heartbeat.  And an ultrasound confirmed that our baby was not a baby at all, but a blighted ovum slash missed miscarriage. 

So, I felt pregnant, had positive pregnancy tests (approximately one million of them), had the hormones, had a placenta, and had a sac.  Once they said “missed miscarriage,” I tuned out, and I’m not totally clear if the sac was empty, or if it contained an embryo that stopped developing very early.  Either way, it doesn’t matter—whatever was in there was our baby, and we loved it so hard from day one.

I am at home waiting to miscarry naturally.  I’ve been on progesterone support for weeks due to slightly low levels, but once I stop, the process should begin.  I just pray that it ends quickly and without complication or pain.

We are absolutely heartbroken.  But we know that we are young, healthy, conceived quickly, and there’s absolutely nothing we could have done to prevent this.

I don’t know when I’ll be back, but your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

The whirlwind continues.

I made it home to Kansas City at about midnight on Friday, totally exhausted.

BUT, I managed to make it to CrossFit at 11 the next morning. 

5 rounds of:

• 5 kettlebell swings (35 lbs)
• 7 thrusters (2 rounds at 65 lbs, 3 rounds at 55 lbs)
• 9 box jumps
• 12 sit-ups

(I finished in 10:04.) 

Then we rested about 3 minutes, and did 5 rounds of:

• 5 burpees (I. Hate. Burpees.)
• 7 push presses (45 lbs)
• 9 box jumps
• 12 sit-ups

(The goal was to beat your previous time, and I did!  9:58.)

It feels good to be sore again.

Today we house-hunted.  We didn’t see anything revolutionary, but we’re seriously thinking about putting an offer in on our front-runner from last week!

Tomorrow I have the misfortune of being on a 6 am flight…and a flight that arrives back at home at midnight.  It’s going to be a loooong day.

Two weeks of travel left—I promise to be back to more normal blogging soon!

In some places, in Utah?  There is no caffeine. 

(That’s caffeine free pop in that machine, right there.)

In the last two days I’ve eaten lots of nondescript sandwiches.  Subway, work-event-standard-issue deli bar sandwiches, bagel sandwiches at the airport, etc.

(I did eat one really good sandwich, at Bison Witches in Tempe, with my buddies Temerity Jane and Brooke.  Which was awesome, and I want to move them to Kansas City to entertain me.)

Utah is really pretty.

Arizona is really hot, and there are cactuses and palm trees, and very little grass.

I haven’t worked out.  I tried, today, but the hotel treadmill was abhorrent, and the rest of the gym consisted of a rusty old stationary bike.   I ran a quarter of a mile until I could not take the BANG BANG BANG BANG my feet made, did some push-ups and sit-ups until I realized just how nasty the hotel gym carpet was, and quit.  (Which is odd, because the rest of the hotel is quite nice.)

I miss CrossFit almost as much as I miss my husband, and dog, and cats, and bed, and shower.  The late flights, and long drives, and early mornings have been killing me.

Anyway, I’ll be home tomorrow super late.  It’s been one heck of a long week and I cannot wait.  (Plus?  Lots of online shopping packages waiting for me.  It will be like Christmas!)

Pop or soda? 

Today was probably the most calm day I’ll have all week.  I get to stay in the same hotel two nights in a row! 

Breakfast was culled from the Starbucks downstairs.  If you can call it that.

Work provided lunch, and it was unfortunately pretty carby and heavy.  My eyes were bigger than my stomach!  I took some Caesar salad, marinara pasta, chicken lasagna, and a breadstick.  The marinara pasta was cold, so I just had the lasagna, salad, and bread.

I had kind of a rough afternoon.  My sinuses are driving me crazy—they are draining so much I feel like I’m choking—but I eventually made it to the hotel gym.   Nothing intense, just a half hour on the elliptical, and I attempted to do my CrossFit box’s WOD I saw online but kind of failed due to lack of kettlebells.  But whatever.  It was a noble effort. 

Since lunch was heavy, I opted for a lighter dinner, and walked there and back—it was about a 15 minute walk each way, so maybe a mile? But with views like this, how can you complain?

Utah is really astonishingly gorgeous, and the people are SO nice.

I had a cup of chicken noodle soup and a spinach salad with various fruits and goat cheese.

And maaaybe a cookie for later.  Maaaybe.

In other news, this is how Tim and I interact when I’m on the road.  God bless Gchat.

Anyway, tomorrow will be another loong day.  I work from 8-2, then head straight to the airport to fly to Arizona that night.  Is it Friday yet?

Where, in your opinion, have you encountered the nicest people ever?  It’s a toss-up between Utah and Iowa for me.

SO!  It’s a fun travel week for me.  And by fun, I mean not really fun, and also grueling. 

On Sunday night, I flew to Denver and drove to Boulder.  I got to my hotel around 11 pm and promptly fell asleep.  I had trouble sleeping, so I got up a little early and squeezed in a teeny tiny bit of exercise.  I used this tabata timer to do 3 4-minute tabatas: sit-ups, squats, and push-ups.  (And I did NOT do push-ups on my knees.  I did the real big girl kind.  With awful form, I’m sure, and slowly, but we have to start somewhere, right?)

Anyway.  Hotel breakfast.  Except I didn’t eat the banana or the muffin, just the raisin bran and milk.

I worked all morning, and for my lunch I got the largest sandwich ever.  I didn’t realize it was so big, and only ended up eating half of it.  But it was good!  It was a ham, Brie, granny smith apple and spinach panini. 

Once I finished with work, it was straight back to the Denver airport.  See?  I did see a few mountains, from the window of my rental car.

(Sidenote: I really really like Colorado and would totally move there if I had a reason to.)

At the airport, I snacked on a fruit and yogurt parfait and a big bottle of water.

Then, I flew from Denver to Salt Lake City, and grabbed an egg sandwich and some fruit on my way to baggage claim.

It got cold on the drive to my hotel because the cab smelled too bad to eat in.  Yuck.  I already miss a sit-down meal that isn’t quite as carb-heavy as today’s eats!

I need some definite R&R tonight—I don’t fly tomorrow, so I’m hoping to get in a for real workout in the afternoon.

For now: there is a king sized bed, a remote control, and a square of extra dark chocolate calling my name.

Where would you move if you could?