Hyperemesis Awareness Day

Well, it is Hyperemesis Awareness Day again.

 

The HER Foundation recently asked survivors how they would respond to a news reporter who asked them to describe hyperemesis in one sentence (without using profanity).  What I said was: "Hyperemesis was nausea and vomiting so extreme that it felt like it sucked the life clean out of my bones."

I could have also said, "Hyperemesis was having people tell you 'Congratulations!' for something that's killing you."

You can read the other responses here.  Some are emotional, some are articulate, but all are more accurate than the magazines you see in the checkout aisle at the grocery store--the ones with Kate Middleton's face splashed all over the cover, the ones that seem to have completely forgotten hyperemesis exists.  I mean, I wouldn't wish HG on my worst enemy, so I certainly hope for the duchess' sake that she really is feeling better and that it helps to eat bits of lavender cookies throughout the day.  But that's not what HG is. For me, nothing helped except Zofran, and that only made me throw up less.  It didn't even put a dent in the nausea.  That was always, always, always, always there.  Always.

Sometimes I get the feeling that my sister and I should write a book about hyperemesis.  I guess I'll have to see what she thinks about that.

Thanks for reading.

You're a vegan, what do you eat? (Part 1)

A long time ago when life was a lot different, I had this great idea to do a blog series entitled, You're vegan? What do you eat? and showcase some of my better culinary endeavors.  Life and hyperemesis intervened, and I spent a lot of time dealing with that.  I'm still dealing with that, and there are a lot of foods I used to eat that I still can't eat, but I think that things are finally starting to get a little bit better.  Plus, I feel like much of the rest of the world probably thinks that vegans eat only iceberg lettuce (which we don't), and I would like to set the record straight.

So here's a compilation of what we ate (mainly for dinner) this week.

You'll notice that almost everything comes from my new favorite website, Plant Based on a Budget, but also that nothing I make follows their recipes exactly because I am incapable of following a recipe exactly. Also, I don't measure anything.  I think I own measuring cups, but I do not use them.

Monday 29 October

Up at 6:15am to run 5-ish miles then shower, get ready, and get little people their breakfast before school.  While Will was dawdling over his Raisin Bran, I made what I like to call Chickpea Salad-- a modified version of Mock Tuna Salad from the good people at PBB.

I used some chickpeas that I had previously soaked, boiled, frozen and then thawed overnight.  Gave them a whirl or two in the old food processor and then mixed them up with Vegan Mayo (currently using Nayonaise), chopped green onion, parsley, and celery, lemon pepper, sea salt, and apple cider vinegar.  Sometimes I also add smoked paprika, but on this particular occasion, it seemed too overwhelming to search through my spice bin for that, so I left it out.  I put the whole thing in the fridge to chill, and left for work.

It was a good thing that I made dinner ahead of time because I ended up having to work until 8:30pm that night.  

When I finally got home, this was like heaven on a bun (with romaine and sliced tomato).

 

Tuesday 30 October

I soaked some lentils overnight, and after my pre-dawn run (this time a bit less than 5 miles) I boiled them enough so that foam formed on the top, and I skimmed that off.  I've found that using this foam-skimming technique eliminates any kind of gastric distress anyone might experience from eating beans or legumes.

After the lentils were boiled and soaked, I added them to the crock pot with chopped onion, crushed (canned) tomatoes, chili powder (a ton, seriously, like 1/4 cup), soy sauce, brown sugar (just a pinch), and … get this … the secret ingredient to virtually all my recipes … liquid smoke.

 

Set the crock pot for 8 hours, and you come home to this:

 

The recipe is based off of Sloppy Lentils from Fat Free Vegan, but we do not actually eat it in a sloppy joe form.  We ate it in bowls, with Ritz Crackers, and Will prefers to call this concoction Chili.  He actually ate some of it, with a lot of coaxing.

Wednesday 31 October

Halloween!

  

The red sunglasses and jaunty cap might look like a Halloween costume, but really, it was just what I wore to walk to work. The festive witch hat helped liven things up a few hours later when I was giving an exam to 350 students.

I had to work a little bit late (grading exams).  When I got home, we had leftover lentils for dinner and then went trick or treating.

Thursday 1 November

Too exhausted to run in the morning.  Slept in an extra hour and then got up and made Garlic Ginger Soup.  This was a little scary for me because all of the times I tried to consume ginger in an effort to calm my nausea when I was pregnant, and since ginger doesn't do a f*cking thing for hyperemesis, I just ended up throwing it up.  To this day, if there is a noticeable taste of ginger in anything that I eat, I instantly feel like I am 9 weeks pregnant and dying again.  Not fun.  But I decided to try the soup anyway, just with a drastically reduced amount of ginger.

To make the soup, I first cubed some tofu into tiny pieces and sautéed that with red pepper, garlic powder, and the tiniest smidgen of freshly grated ginger imaginable (I skipped the powdered ginger that the recipe called for).

Meanwhile, I heated up water in a pot and added some vegetable bullion cubes, unpeeled garlic cloves (I was confused about that aspect of it, but it ended up fine), the tiniest sliver of fresh ginger, soy sauce, lemon juice, and sriracha sauce.  I also cooked some rice noodles (real, actual rice noodles that I had gotten at an Asian market up on Olive Street).  I added everything together, and at some point I also added some chopped cilantro.

Then I put it all into a pyrex serving dish and stuck it in the fridge.  Doing all of this took a lot longer than I had, and I ended up having to (literally) run to work so that I wouldn't be egregiously late.  

All day long, I was looking forward to this soup, and when we finally sat down to dinner that night, it was the best thing I have ever tasted in my entire life.  (Rob will tell you I say that about a lot of foods.  But this time I really mean it, I swear).

I added a lot more sriracha to mine.  William refused to eat the soup, but he had some rice noodles with nutritional yeast on them.

Friday 2 November

Today.  It would have been my Grandma Florence's 97th birthday.  I thought about making some lemon sugar cookies or strawberry pie to honor her memory with the things she would want me to eat, but the reality is that I do not have time for any of that.

I ran this morning and then had to work a little bit late again.  When I got home, I made some whole wheat rotini and unthawed a few Avocado Pesto cubes.  Avocado pesto is another favorite of mine based on a recipe from PBB.

Basically, you take a ton of basil, avocado, garlic, lemon juice, pine nuts (I do not use pistachios like they call for in the recipe), cumin, olive oil, and sea salt, and you puree it in the food processor.

I like to keep this stuff on hand, so I make a big batch and then freeze it in cubes.  On nights like tonight, I can thaw about 4-5 cubes to put on our pasta.

 

Before I tried Garlic Ginger Soup earlier in the week, Avocado Pesto was my all-time favorite meal, ever.  It still ranks as a very high second.  Okay, maybe a tie.  Unfortunately, Rob doesn't like Avocado Pesto as much as I do, but he usually endures it.  I even got Will to eat some of this tonight, although it required a lot of bribing.  Still, it was a huge victory.  Massive.  Add in his consumption of lentils earlier in the week, and I am over the moon.

And so that's a week of vegan dinners, more or less. No iceberg lettuce to be found. Thanks for reading.

In honor of Hyperemesis World Awareness Day

Today is the first annual Hyperemesis World Awareness Day.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I thought I would repost a blog entry I wrote on March 29th, 2009 when I was 18 weeks pregnant and suffering from HG.

But first, a few observations:

Although William is now nearly 3 years old, HG is long from gone or forgotten.  Sometimes I wonder if I have PTSD, and I didn't even have HG that bad (compared to some of the women you read about on the Help HER website).  I still have ridiculously powerful aversions to many types of foods that made me sick while I was pregnant.  But beyond the foods that I avoided while pregnant, I now have aversions to foods that I was actually able to eat during that timeframe. Because food didn't taste right and made me feel awful in a kind of desperate way.  Sometimes it feels like my diet is more limited now even than when I was sick.

Also, I think HG made me kind of a racist.  The mere idea of Chinese food still makes me wither and die.  Three years after HG.  I have to avoid all things that would even conjure an image of Chinese food in my mind.  Some of my co-workers do research in China, and there have been times when I've been listening to their talks and I've actually started to feel sick.  What the hell.

One more thing: smells still bother me a lot.  If you wear perfume, I want to cut you.

I live in absolute terror of ever becoming pregnant again.  This is compounded by the fact that merely licking a birth control pill is enough to reduce me to a pile of vomit on the bathroom floor for 2 solid days.  I don't know if other HG survivors have similarly severe reactions to hormonal contraceptives; I haven't bothered to take the time to Google it.  I wasn't quite as morose about all of this back in 2009, but now I am absolutely adamant that I will never, ever, ever, ever go through it again.  I look at William and think, I've literally got all my eggs in one basket.

 

And now, for a trip down HG memory lane:

 

29 March 2009

(Sensitive information about vomit and then a bit of a rant follows. Read at your own risk)

 

My whole life, I’ve had severe motion sickness. When I was little, I couldn’t get into a car without a “choke bowl” (usually an empty Cool-Whip container). I have distinct memories of the journey across town to my aunt’s house—I can still see the roadside littered with the puke dumped out of my Cool-Whip bowl and the kleenexes used to wipe off my face. Over the years, I somehow learned to suppress the vomit reflex but was always left with the nausea. It was a useful skill to have. There are many times when it is inopportune to puke, such as a taxi-cab in Paris, a bus in Ireland (Amy, you will remember this), or your in-laws’ mini-van. I’m not quite sure how I do it… maybe it’s part self-hypnosis, part meditation, part mystery. But what has resulted is that over the years I’ve become so good at suppressing the urge to vomit, that it is very, very difficult for me to throw up.

 

Since becoming pregnant with Fig, I’ve thrown up 81 times. All but about 3 of these times were between week 5 and 11-ish, at which point I went on Zofran. The most I ever threw up in one day was 9 times, which really isn’t that much compared to a lot of women who’ve had all-out hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). During a typical day, I would only throw up 4 or 5 times (some women with HG throw up 20 times or more). The problem was, of course, the nausea. To get me to throw up even once—much less 4, 5, or even 9 times—required no small feat. Generally, I would wake up in the morning… feeling sick. Sometimes I would puke once or more. I might eat, or might not eat; either way, the nausea would rise to a deafening crescendo that would leave me motionless in bed for several hours, until finally around 1pm I would throw up. There might be a few more hours of lying in bed before I threw up again. Usually it would get worse around 5 or 6pm, and I’d throw up several times in the evenings. On more than one occasion, I’d be puking when Rob came in the door after work/swimming/biking/running or whatever it was he had going on.

 

Most of the time when I threw up, my stomach was empty to begin with, so I didn’t have to contend with chunks of food. And I preferred it this way. Stomach acid is not pleasant, but I got used to throwing it up.  There were times, however, when I would become ridiculously, freakishly, out-of-control, crazy-hungry. Desperate enough to have eaten roast beef it had been placed in front of me (thank god it wasn’t). I ate some very strange things during this time, and unfortunately I learned what it was like to throw each of them up. Below is a list—a guide, if you will—from the terrible to the downright pleasant.

 

Things that were terrible

• Rice
• Nectarines
• Blackberries
• Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable Soup (who would have thought it would be so bad?)
• Healthy Choice Vegetarian Vegetable Soup (again, who would have thought?)

 

Things that ought to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention

• Dairy. ( Oh. My. God. Dairy. ) The single worst experience of my life may have been throwing up cheese tortellini. Tied with the time I threw up tapioca pudding. Let us not speak of this again.

 

Things that weren’t so bad

• Water
• Gatorade
• Herbal tea
• Ginger-Ale (burny and zingy on the way back up, but I could handle it).
• Pretzels
• Baked potato (at the time I recall being surprised that this wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. But remembering it now makes my heart stop a little. I haven’t eaten potato since this incident).
• Grapefruit (people told me that puking citrus was abominable; I actually didn’t think it was that bad).

 

Things that were surprisingly pleasant

• Strawberry jello (leaves a nice aftertaste)
• Honeycomb cereal, dry. (Seriously. It was not only not bad, I would go as far to say it was actually enjoyable. It digests remarkably quickly [like 15 minutes], and on the way up, it tastes good).

 

It isn’t always food that makes me nauseated. At my worst, taking a shower almost always made me throw up, but then again, going too long without taking a shower made me sick as well. I couldn’t stand the scent of unscented soap. I couldn’t wash my hair, wash dishes, scrub floors, vacuum, clean anything, fold laundry, turn on the stove, be in close proximity to people, ride in a car, ride my bike, or sometimes even walk.

 

It’s been tough, but what got me through worst of this was the thought that one day it would become something to laugh about—just a passing memory. Unfortunately, I have not quite made it to that point. At this precise moment when I’m writing, I feel okay. But I’m coming off 2 days when I felt like hell and had to lie in bed trying to breathe my way through the nausea. I found out the hard way that even though I am nearly halfway through this pregnancy, if I try to go off Zofran, I end up puking like it’s week 9 all over again.

 

When this whole pregnancy-induced-nausea began, I was actually pretty calm about it. I know from all the marathons I’ve run that the worst thing you can do is let negative thoughts creep into your brain, because once you do, all hell breaks loose. So I refused to let myself be anything other than calm. I didn’t even take it one day at a time—I just got through one minute and then would move onto the next. And I constantly reassured myself that this too would pass. It would all be over soon, and the only way out was through.

 

It’s gotten harder as the weeks continue to go on and I’ve passed several points of no return (I’ll feel better by Valentines’ Day… by week 16… by week 18…). The other night, when I was in the depths of a nauseated despair (all sense of calm having flown out the window), I started to get angry too. Over the years, a lot of people have said some incredibly rude and inappropriate things to me regarding my lack of procreation. I thought of these people and the things they had said to me, and all I wanted to do was smash my fist into a wall and scream something to the effect of ARE YOU HAPPY NOW??!! ARE YOU !@#$%^* HAPPY?? But I didn’t do that, and eventually I fell asleep and felt better in the morning.

 

I wrote all this down because as difficult as it has been at times, I want to remember it. People tell me that I’ll forget about this part eventually, and that I’ll want to have another kid—a sibling for Fig. I don’t know what the future holds. I said I would never, ever, have a baby, but now here I am, doing this. What I do know is that if somebody makes a remark about future progeny and I am in the wrong frame of mind, my likely response will be to strangle them.

 

Hoping for minimal nausea in week 19. Thanks for reading.

Good riddance, 2011

Christmas 2011 was going along really well, at least a hell of a lot better than Christmas 2010, when we had double mortgages, sinus infections, terrible weather, and a catastrophic event that damn near ruined us.  This year, Christmas seemed like a nice, gentle, spring breeze in comparison.

By far, the best thing about this Christmas was that for the first time in recent memory, no one was going through hypermesis.  I was so thrilled about that.  Oh my god, was I ever thrilled.

My mom made vegan party potatoes, and they were delicious.  And I could eat them! Without feeling sick! It was amazing.  I was so, so thankful, that for all practical purposes, my sister and I are both done with hyperemesis forever.

After Christmas dinner, Will took a nap.  Rob decided he wanted to hike at Detweiller Park, and I went with him.  I guess I had momentarily  forgotten who Rob is because what he had termed as a hike was for me an all-out, balls to the walls, full steam ahead, trail run.  It was nice, though, and there were really very few times when I thought I was going to die by careening off a cliff face.

Chilled and kind of tired from the trail run, we still managed to stop by Amy MeyPfan's house (actually, her mother's house) so that she and I had a chance to see each other.  I was still feeling pretty good, though a little agitated because the trail run had taken longer than I'd anticipated and I was eager to get home and see what Will was up to.  Then I started feeling kind of bad.  For no apparent reason.  There was nausea.  Seemingly out of nowhere.  It was starting to feel like 2 of the marathons I've run when I haven't eaten for a long time afterwards and gotten really, really @#$%^& up.  I didn't think I could be hungry... I'd just had Christmas dinner.  Those vegan party potatoes.  God, the vegan party potatoes.  Let us not mention them again.

I decided that I was dehydrated.  I hadn't taken my own water on the trail run (thinking, mistakenly, that it was to be a nice and easy hike) and had taken only a sip or two from Rob's Camelback the whole time.  I must be dehydrated.  I needed water.

So we left Amy's, and I still thought I would be able to make a full recovery if I just got some water.  I drank.  I felt worse.  Rob drove, and I texted my Aunt to let her know we were on our way back to my parents.  She had been planning on coming over after Rob and I returned from our "walk at the park."

We got home, and I felt very, very bad.  I was freezing and I thought, I must have been out in the cold too long.  I was sure that drinking some water and taking a hot shower would bring me back to life.  I just wasn't sure how exactly I was going to manage to shower, because I could barely stand up.  Get it together, Melissa, I told myself, Auntie is already on her way over.

So I got in the shower.  The shampoo smelled gross.  The soap smelled gross.  Everthing smelled and felt gross.  Just like when I was pregnant.

And then, before I'd even been able to get my hair rinsed out, I had to bolt from the shower and projectile vomit into the toilet.  Just like when I was pregnant.  Jebus, the first 11 weeks of my pregnancy (the pre-Zofran weeks), I think I puked every time I took a shower.  It @#$%-ing sucked.

I did the mature thing, which was to start sobbing hysterically.

I tried to push all the nastiness aside, because I really wanted to see my Aunt.  Plus, I actually felt a lot better after I threw up, which was great.  That never happened when I had hyperemesis.  I thought it was strange, but it seemed like the most likely explanation was that I'd overexerted myself on the hike, perhaps too soon after Christmas dinner, and that I'd gotten dehydrated.  I've felt this way many times after running... although never to the point of actually throwing up.

Well, I was only able to see my Aunt and Uncle for about 5 minutes before I had to stumble back downstairs and puke again.  And again, and again.  It was scary as hell to me, because my hyperemesis began exactly 3 years ago to the day, when I woke up at my parents' on Christmas morning and puked in the shower.  It brought back a lot of memories, particularly of things that I would very much like to forget.

By the middle of the night when I couldn't go more than an hour without puking, I realized that this must be a stomach virus.

It is ironic, you know.  I was so thrilled about not being nauseous or vomiting this Christmas, and then *bam* the stomach flu.  I puked for maybe 24 hours straight-- even breaking my hyperemesis record of the number of times puked in one day.  After the puking stopped, I felt so completely wiped out.  As in, walking up a flight of stairs made me dizzy enough to nearly pass out.  It was actually several days before that went away.

As of now, I am pretty much back to normal.  The weird thing is, nobody else got sick.  I am so glad that I didn't pass it along to anybody, but it just doesn't make any sense... I shared a water bottle with Rob during our trail run, for crying out loud!  It's a mystery.

Good riddance, 2011.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

 

Love/Hate relationship with kale

*Warning, discussion of vomit is below.  Read at your own discretion*

 

I have this sort of love hate relationship with kale.  For a long time, I loved it, and my go-to meal was inspired by this recipe (basically kale sauteed with garlic and olive oil), except that I would add cumin and coriander to it.  Heaven.

Then I got pregnant.

Hyperemesis began on Christmas Eve of 2008 when I was chopping kale to make this very dish.  Remember that?  I thought I might die.  I threw up lots of things. I never threw up kale though, because the very thought of kale disgusted me so much that I couldn't even see it without running out of the room, curling into the fetal position, and rocking back and forth while chanting unintelligible things.

I haven't been able to eat kale since then.  That's almost 3 years of no kale.  I actually still have a hard time with a lot of green vegetables.  Things just don't taste the same to me anymore.  I thought it would go away after the baby was born, or after I stopped nursing him, but I am still kind of waiting on some of these things.  At any rate.  I've tried kale a few times since then, but I've never been able to eat it sauteed wtih garlic and cumin.  It wasn't just the taste of it, but the texture too.  The only way I could eat it was if I made it into kale chips.  Well, the strangest thing happened after my 18 mile training run this weekend-- I was craving sauteed kale.  (Who craves kale after an 18 mile training run? That's crazy).  So I bought some at the grocery store and last night I made it.  Delicious!  I ate a ton of it.  I was so happy!  I think kale is probably the healthiest food on the planet.  It makes me feel like I'm going to live forever when I eat it.

Well, unfortunately, I also ate some sauteed mushrooms with my kale dish last night.  I only ate a couple because they didn't taste quite right.  I'd just bought the mushrooms at the grocery store, they couldn't have gone bad already!  Could they?

They had.

Long about 10:30 last night, it hit me.  Oh god, those must have been some bad 'shrooms.

I felt awful.

I went and got my grandmother's emesis basin.  Yes, emesis basin.  For some reason, I inherited it after she died.  I guess it was among the items left in her room, and my mother thought maybe I could use it.  She was right.

 

About 11:30, I sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the emesis basin and gagging.  Thank god for the emesis basin.  I ran to the bathroom.

Let me just say, throwing up kale (sauteed with garlic, cumin and coriander) ranks right up there as one of the most unpleasant things I have ever done.  There is probably a reason why bulimics generally do not binge on sauteed kale: it does not come up easily.

(Beware, the description below is gross)

I was kneeling there at the toilet, gagging my heart out, but only a pathetically small amount of kale came up.  It was completely clogging my esophgaus; it was in my nose, it was filling up my entire head including my brain.  I thought I might choke to death.  When I breathed I tasted it.  When I swallowed, it felt like I was swallowing over a massive wad of kale (probably because I was).  It was disgusting.

I had to revert to an old hyperemesis trick that I used when things weren't coming up easily.  I drank an entire glass of water, quickly.  I sat there and waited.  I was exhausted, I felt terrible.  Finally (emesis bowl in hand), I went back to bed and curled up into a shivering ball.

A half an hour later, I sat bolt upright again, gagging into the emesis basin.  I ran into the bathroom (again) and barely made it to the porcelain goddess before the kale started coming up.  And up, and up.  Oh my god, and up.  I had eaten a lot of kale, and it all came up, every last bit of it.  I stayed in the bathroom for a while and puked 2 or 3 times and then finally felt like I was done.  I brushed my teeth and brushed and brushed, but I could not get rid of the awful burning of kale sauteed with garlic and cumin and coriander.

It was no cheese tortellini (throwing that up ought to be outlawed by the Geneva convention), but it is not an experience I would like to repeat.  And I probably won't repeat it, given that I doubt I will ever be able to eat kale again.  Which is really too bad, considering that I am pretty sure it confers immortality if eaten in appropriately massive quantities.  We'll see.

Sorry for being so gross.  Thanks for reading.

Stomach flu

This past week both Rob and I had the stomach flu.  He got it first, and then it hit me with a vengeance about 24 hours later.  Rob still wasn't feeling good when it hit me, but thankfully he had the wherewithal to function and take care of Will.

I'd often wondered what it would be like for me to have intestinal distress for the first time since my hyperemetic pregnancy.  Unsurprisingly, it wasn't pretty.  I started throwing up about 5am on Tuesday and finally quit at around 10pm.  I threw up every 1/2 hour to an hour most of that time, except for about a 3 hour block in the late afternoon when I didn't puke but just felt like it, which was perhaps even more awful.  I was ridiculously dehydrated.

I took a sick day on Tuesday, even though I am technically ineligible to take a sick day until I've worked there for 6 months, but under the circumstances, going to work was not an option when all I could do was lie in bed and puke into a bucket.  On Wednesday I was back in the office though, very spacey and unable to eat or drink anything.  I couldn't really stand up or walk for long periods of time, and even talking to people was difficult.  Unfortunately, this is the busiest time of year for me... giving 4 final exams and grading 2 papers, all for large intro classes with several hundred students.  I am looking at some serious overtime in the next 10 days, it is crazy ridiculous.  I had about 30 people in my office for Intro to Public Health alone, firing questions at me about their upcoming exam, when I was just like, people, I need to lie down now, please.

Somehow, miraculously, Will has not gotten it.  I almost hesitate to write that, incase I jinx it and he gets sick.  But I feel like he would have gotten it by now if he were going to.  Half of his daycare was out with the stomach flu, as was one of his teachers.  How he managed to come through unscathed is a mystery (or is it just the antibodies in breastmilk?)

So much vomiting did bring up a lot of really scary, dark, unhappy memories of my pregnancy, a lot of anger, a lot of everything I have tried unsuccessfully to forget about these last 16 months.  But it also made me realize a few things.  Mainly, the completely messed up way I felt for several days after giving birth had absolutely nothing to do with giving birth, but because of the 8 hours of vomiting I did during labor.  The vomiting that was caused by the GBS antibiotics that they "had" to give me.  That terrible, nauseous, unable to eat, unable to drink, unable to speak, unable to see straight, unable to stand up without passing out... that wasn't because I'd given birth.  It was because I'd vomited for 8 hours straight and didn't eat anything for almost 2 days.  I still find it weird how nobody at the hospital really gave a shit about how completely messed up I was after Will was born, but that is a different post for a different time.

What this entry is supposed to be about is that the stomach flu has had catastrophic consequences on my ability to breastfeed.  As I recently mentioned, I have been struggling a lot lately to make any milk at all, and I feel like the stomach flu has essentially sealed the deal for us in terms of weaning. I didn't nurse Will on Tuesday, the day I was sick.  I was just too, too sick.  I couldn't stop vomiting/dry heaving and shaking/shivering all over, and I really really did not want Will to get sick.  I was so afraid if I touched him or was close to him at all, he'd get it.  In the morning before Rob took him to daycare, Will toddled into our bedroom and was looking at me and I could see his little blonde head bobbing along as he circled the bed, and it made me so sad because I just wanted to hold him but felt too awful.  I was still too sick to nurse him that night.  I was completely freaking out about it though, because I knew that I am not in the position to be skipping feedings, and that if I did this, it would probably mean the end of it.  Rob knew I didn't want it to end this way, so he bundled up and walked over to my office (where I keep my breast pump) and brought it home to me.  Give him a gold star for this.  I pumped, and I pumped (stopping to throw up at least once) for over 20 minutes, and not a drop came out, not a single drop.

On Wednesday, I nursed Will in the morning (feeling nothing come out) and I pumped later at work (okay, maybe a couple of drops, but that was it).  I know I am still ridiculously dehydrated, but it doesn't seem to be getting any better.  I've still kept nursing him, but it seems very futile at this point.  Just for comfort, not milk.

The thing is, on Tuesday when Will didn't nurse, he was totally fine without it, even at night time.  Rob rocked him and put him to bed, and he slept clear through until 6:30 the next morning. For several months, he really hasn't sought it out, but he doesn't turn it down when I offer it to him.  And he still never, ever unlatches on his own.  Even if he is bored and wants to play with his toys or with dad's iPad, he just tries to take me along with him.  Sometimes I think he might be a little frustrated that there is no milk coming out, but most of the time, that doesn't seem to bother him either.

I don't want to give it up this way, but it would be an easy out right now.  It's just that last night he had a really rough night.  I think he's getting his canines in, and he woke up around 3am and screamed for about 3 hours.  He was trying to latch on to my sweatshirt, he wanted to nurse so bad.  So I just nursed him, and even though there was no milk coming out, it comforted him.  I just wasn't happy about it.  It doesn't feel so great to nurse him without any milk coming out, and the whole situation of losing my milk this way made me really sad.

Sooo.  This morning I broke into my emergency stash of leftover Domperidone from when I gave it up about a year ago.  I have enough for 8 days.  I have no idea if it will do anything, but I had to try.  I also ordered some Motherlove Special Blend tincture, which should arrive on Tuesday.  In the meantime, I'm pumping at work and trying to rehydrate the best I can.  We'll see if any of this works.  Maybe it won't, but at least I won't go down without a fight.

Thanks for reading.

One year later

Has it really been a year since Will was born?

Almost.

I've had a lot of time by this point to reflect on his birth. I am so thankful for how it all turned out, but going through it was definitely awful. Awful, awful, awful. I looked back on the birth so negatively for such a long time. And I felt so mad, because I had done everything right. I had done everything Ina May's Guide to Childbirth said to do. Why had it ended up being such a thing of terror instead a thing of joy? Why had it left me feeling so defeated instead of elated? I was angry at the hippies in the book for describing contractions as "waves" or "rushes." Those words just didn't do it justice. It was more like a tsunami or being run over by a train but somehow managing to stay alive only to feel the impact over and over again. I think Rob is still sort of scarred from the experience, and he wasn't even the one directly going through it.

I never want to be pregnant again. I never want to go back to that horrible, horrible dark, place of never not feeling like I was going to vomit, of never having any relief from the nausea, not even for a moment. And I never want to have a newborn again. Not one that cries and cries and cries all the time. Nobody understands how much he cried (and still cries), not even Rob. I was the one who was home alone with him, all day, every day. I don't know what was wrong with him. I guess I never will.

But the thing is, I think I could give birth again. I want a do-over. Even though going through the experience was completely awful and terrifying at the time, I can look back on it now and think of it as truly amazing. I still kind of can't believe that I did it. Nothing in life will ever, ever compare. Everything else is just so pale. Instead of remembering the terrible, defeating moments when I was sure they were going to cut me open before I could muster, "I do not consent," I remember the hugely immense power of the contractions. Power like a volcano erupting or like an earthquake ripping the earth in two. I remember how some sort of primal instinct took over, how I intuitively felt the need to stay vertical and how I knew how to hum, moan, breathe through the contractions. I remember how I let go, just completely surrendered to it. Each contraction felt like being thrown from a cliff, hitting the water some thousand miles below and feeling it break every bone in your body. But you just don't fight it, don't struggle against it. Keep your shoulders and jaw relaxed and you'll float up to the top and get a breath of fresh air before the whole thing happens all over again. And again and again. How you manage to live through it is a mystery. At some point during transition, during a deathly calm between contractions, I remember looking at my doula through heavily lidded eyes, and whispering, "I can do this. I can do this." And I remember a look of pride washed over her and she said, "You are doing this." I was. I had to. The only way out is through.

Thanks for reading.

San Francisco

We've been back a week now, but I'm just now finally having a chance to write about our trip to San Francisco.

This is the third year I've gone to San Francisco with Rob for the WWDC. The first year I was healthy and fit, and I roamed the city on foot for hours and hours every day. Last year, I was very sick and very pregnant and a fair amount of the time I had to lie in bed trying not to puke. And this year I had Will.

Luckily, he was a very good sport for the most part. The time zone change was a little rough on him, plus the trip coincided with his ongoing teething, but overall, it was a lot easier than I thought it might be.

Will didn't care for the crib that the hotel provided, so he ended up sleeping in bed with Rob and me. It was actually the first time he's ever done that. At home he always cries and screams if I try to put him in bed with us, so we have never been able to co-sleep. But for some reason in the hotel, our bed was where he wanted to be. It worked out pretty well, because with his time zone confusion and teething, he would wake up a couple of times in the night anyway, and I didn't even have to get up to nurse him or calm him down. The bed was a king size bed (larger than our bed at home), so luckily there was plenty of room for Will to do his usual nighttime rotations. Pretty much every night he would pivot so that he was lying crossways in the bed, with the top of his head snuggled into my side and his feet in Rob's face. I thought that was cute and hilarious, but then again, I wasn't the one waking up with someone's feet in my face.

Will and I managed to do a lot of sightseeing while Rob was at the conference. I am so, so glad I ended up getting an Ergo of my own before the trip. We took a few trips out on the town with the stroller, but for the most part, we just Ergo-ed it. We found out that strollers were not allowed on buses unless they were folded up, and it was really so much of a pain for me to carry the baby, the stroller, and the diaper bag. Just going with the Ergo was a lot easier when I was on the bus by myself. Plus, the buses and cable cars get very crowded, so even if I had managed to lug the stroller on by myself, it would have been difficult to manage all that while also on a standing room only bus. With the Ergo, Will was right there and could nurse when he got hungry and fall asleep against me when he got tired.

Will nursing in the cable car

Together, Will and I trekked through Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, the Embarcadero, the Castro, and Haight-Ashbury. During Rob's breaks from the conference, the 3 of us took trips to Ghirardelli Square, Coit Tower, Golden Gate Park, and Ocean Beach.

Will sleeps through his first visit to the ocean

After the conference was over, last Saturday we all went to Golden Gate Bridge. Will decided to get fussy just as we arrived, so I ended up nursing him in the Ergo as we walked part of the way across the very windy bridge. That's probably one of the strangest places I have ever nursed the baby.

From Golden Gate Bridge we took a bit of a lovely hike to Baker Beach. Rob wore Will in the Ergo for the hike, being that I was quite tired from all that lactating and walking.

Will was awake for his second trip to the ocean, and the weather was much nicer this time. Interestingly, we didn't realize that Baker Beach is apparently a nude beach, at least at the north part (where we entered). I actually didn't notice at first, because I was too focused on Will and the ocean, but then at some point I realized that some of the people out on the beach were nude. It was a bit weird, though I will say, a definite plus was when Will got hungry and wanted to nurse again, I didn't feel the need to cover up or try to be discreet.

This year's trip was definitely a lot better than last year, when I was nauseated all the time. One major improvement is that the sight, smell, or thought of Chinese food doesn't make me want to set myself on fire and jump screaming out of a window anymore. Being that there is a large population of Chinese people in San Francisco, avoiding exposure to Chinese food is downright impossible. I even ate Chinese food again for the first time since probably January 2009 (when for a week, all I wanted to eat was chow mein vegetables, and since then have not wanted anything to do with it). I survived the experience, but I think I could probably go at least another year before eating Chinese food again.

I also was able to enjoy a seriously fantastic hummus and veggie sandwich from a place called (I think?) Cafe Verona, on 5th between Mission and Market. We got sandwiches there to take on our picnic lunch to Baker Beach. I know I was really hungry by the time we ate, but that sandwich was probably the best thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. I ate there a few times last year too, but so many things made me sick (hold the cucumbers, onions, peppers, etc) that it was difficult at best. The worst part was that there is a sushi restaurant right next to the cafe, and when I was pregnant, the smell of it made me want to hurl myself into an erupting volcano. Last year, I had to walk past this place to get from our hotel to Moscone, where the conference was held, and every time I did it, I had to bury my face in the crook of my elbow and close my eyes (even the sight of the place made me sick) so that I didn't die. This year, we stayed at a different hotel, so I didn't walk past there every day. When I did finally walk past that sushi place, the smell was gross and disgusting and it brought back all sorts of memories from when I was sick and pregnant, but it didn't make me feel awful to the terrifying extent that it did back then. At any rate, if anyone reading this ever visits San Francisco, go to that cafe on 5th Street next to the sushi restaurant and get a sandwich, it's divine.

One other thing that helped us all out eating-wise was that I found a Whole Foods within walking distance from our hotel. I was able to get avocados and bananas and other things for Will to eat, so we were fine in that regard. Plus, we had fridge in our room, so I got soymilk and cereal for breakfast, snacks, etc. Having a grocery store and fridge made it a lot easier to be a traveling vegan. Walking around all day with Will in the Ergo, not to mention lactating, makes me ravenously hungry. I discovered that Whole Foods carries an assortment of vegan doughnuts, which were amazing . It is probably a good thing that I do not have regular access to vegan doughnuts.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

What a difference a year makes

June 2009

June 2010

Skinny jeans

I know all of you out there reading this lost all your pregnancy weight and fit back into all your old clothes within a week or two weeks or a day or whatever, but I didn't. I stayed fat for a long time. I didn't gain a tremendous amount of weight while I was pregnant (27 pounds), but I held onto it. Actually, that's not quite true. I lost almost all of it while giving birth, most likely because I didn't eat for about 3 days and threw up 2-3 times per contraction (a side effect of the antibiotics they "had" to give me for GBS+). When I came home from the hospital and stepped on the scale to find that I'd lost 20 pounds, I thought, losing this pregnancy weight is going to be a piece of cake.

Speaking of cake.

Even vegan cake will make you fat if you eat enough of it. And I did. I actually gained weight after Will was born and while I was exclusively breastfeeding him. This is probably because my impressive weight loss during his birth was mainly due to dehydration. But also, I became an eating machine after Will was born. My lactation consultant thought I was suspiciously skinny and advised me to eat, eat, eat, in order to increase my milk supply. And I did. For 9 months I'd been constantly puking or feeling like I would puke, and even though the nausea persisted for about 3-4 months after Will was born (actually I am still nauseated sometimes, but not like I was while pregnant), I could eat a lot more things. Like tortilla chips (no salsa though, until just recently), and peanut butter. And cake.

I felt really bad about myself about being so fat, but apparently, not bad enough to stop eating. Plus, having a snack was sometimes really effective at drowning out Will's constant crying. It was like, "As long as I am eating these vegan brownies, I cannot hear you cry!!"

Within the past few months though, I've finally noticed that my clothes are fitting me better, and in some cases, are even loose. Around the time of the marathon, I cautiously stepped on the scale and found that I was only a few pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight (which was Freakishly Thin) and am actually a few pounds less than what I weighed in high school and after we came back from a year in Nicaragua (when I had taken a hiatus from running).

A couple days ago, I was going through a bin of old clothes that I packed away during my pregnancy and by this point had pretty much given up hope of ever wearing again. I put on a skirt that had been tight on me when we came home from Nicaragua and it was pleasantly loose! And then I came across my Skinny Jeans. The last time I had worn them was when I was skeletal and 14 weeks pregnant and so sick that hurling myself into an abyss seemed like a good idea. With much trepidation, I tried on the jeans, not expecting them to go on past the knee.

And they fit! Comfortably! Still a bit tighter on me than back in my glory days, but I can definitely wear them.

So there you have it. I have finally lost almost all of my pregnancy weight and am back in my skinny jeans. And it "only" took 10 months. And I didn't do anything special. Unless you count becoming a vegan (again) and running a marathon.

When Will was the size of a lemon and mama was skinny

Well rounded, but in skinny jeans again

Stellar weekend

We had a lot to accomplish over the long weekend-- mainly house and yard work, but we had a bit of time for some fun too. On Sunday, I had been wanting to go for a longish run (sans jogging stroller). The day got off to kind of a bad start, as I began it in a grumpy mood on account of Will's frequent waking during the night. He has been working on some teeth for at least 2 weeks now. By the end of the weekend, his top left incisor finally poked on through! I was hoping both of the top incisors would come in at once, but the other one is still working on him. "Teething" doesn't really change Will's daytime demeanor, but he does have a bit of trouble sleeping at night during the thick of it.

The day started to look better when I finally got to set out for a 6 mile run in the heat. I wish I would have had time to run 16, but since Will doesn't take a bottle or eat his food if I am not there, 6 was all I could reasonably manage. And it was great. I was slow and I had to walk some, but I loved it. There is something just so purifying about running long distances in the heat. No, I am not going to do the Badwater Ultra, but I do love running in hot weather. It was one of the number one things I missed last year when I was pregnant. That and not puking and/or feeling like I would puke all the time.

After I got home and fed Will again, Rob took him for a walk in the stroller. While they were gone, I went over to Prairie Gardens and got some ground cover-- Vinca minor. We had this ground cover at our house in Dunlap when I was growing up. My co-valedictorian speech (there were 11 of us) at high school graduation was kind of a rambling, incoherent poem about vinca flowers that also somehow incorporated at least one quotation from A Tale of Two Cities. ("It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done...") Yikes. At any rate, I am still working at planting the vinca, and I hope that it manages to grow and spread into a nice ground cover for our flower bed.

When Rob and Will got home from their walk/nap, Will had a quick nip of milk, and then we set off for a picnic lunch and Will's first trip to a swimming pool. We hooked up the Burley to our tandem bike and rode over to the pool. It was our first ride all together on the tandem (well, at least the first ride outside of our neighborhood), and I was kind of nervous. I am actually not very good at riding a bike in general, and I was especially bad at it when I was pregnant. For me, being pregnant felt a lot like being seasick, and I never felt too steady on the bike. Luckily by now all of that is much improved, and after the first couple of miles I was able to relax and remember how great riding a bike can be. Unfortunately by the time we actually got to the pool, it was well past the time he usually eats his lunch, and he was due for another nap. A fair amount of crying ensued.

After I had managed to coax him to consume a reasonable amount of lunch (when he gets in a mood like that, he doesn't want to eat), we went into the pool area and I put some sunscreen on him. Of course, all the doctors and baby books and the internet and random people at the farmer's market and other mothers tell you that you have to put sunscreen on a baby, but I had my reservations about doing this. The last time I put sunscreen on him (yes, it was "baby sunscreen" and the bottle even boasted "pediatrician recommended"), he promptly got his hands in it and rubbed his eyes and then his eyes got so red and swollen I freaked out and almost took him to the ER. A lot of flushing out with water and comfort nursing finally made it better.

Well, the same thing happened with the sunscreen again at the pool. Much more crying ensued. We tried to cheer Will up by taking him into the baby pool and letting him splash around (something he loves to do in the bathtub). It was very bright out, and he refused to keep on his floppy hat or sunglasses, so the sun was in his eyes and he kept rubbing them. Now add chlorine to the sunscreen chemicals he had gotten in his eyes. He was a mess.

This whole thing wasn't working, so we took him out of the pool and I nursed him, which was probably what he wanted all along. I was suddenly very glad I had sucked it up and worn a 2-piece bathing suit. I'd had huge reservations about pouring my post-partum body into such a tiny suit, but practically speaking, I had known it would be the most convenient for nursing. It worked out pretty well. I was kind of surprised though, that the whole time we were at the baby pool I only saw one other mother nursing her baby. I guess I just kind of thought that when you go to a place with lots of babies, a lot of moms will be nursing.

Will took a bit of a nap in my arms and then was refreshed enough for a little bit more fun. (He even wrote about it on his blog)

Will says, "I'm not sure about this."

Will and dad

More splashing

Note the strategically placed towel covering up giant overhanging post-partum belly

It was a good weekend. I suppose it would have been nice if we had gotten even more yard work and house work done, but at least we got to take junior swimming and go on a family bike ride. I'm already looking forward to our next adventures.

Transformation

A while back, I entered a writing contest being hosted by Rixa of Stand and Deliver, one of my favorite blogs. The topic was, "Becoming a parent, becoming transformed." When I first saw the contest announcement, I thought, "Hm, writing. That's something I like to do," but I had no intention of entering. What in the world would I say?

I couldn't get the contest out of my mind though. Not because I intended to enter, but instead because it made me think about think about how becoming a mother had changed me. I hadn't had that transformative experience the natural childbirth books seemed to promise. It wasn't like in the movies or on TV shows when the moment of birth is marked with shouts of joy. By the time Will entered this world, I was just so, so exhausted. And I was emotionally and physically drained from 9 months of constant nausea. The days immediately following Will's birth only got worse. The nausea did not go away, and we didn't have that perfect breastfeeding relationship the natural birth books had led me to believe would be the end result of a drug-free birth. It didn't get better for a long, long time.

I suppose these experiences have transformed me, but somehow the whole thing just seemed larger than that and much more deeply rooted. I began to wonder how I had gotten here, from someone who never planned on having children, to someone who practically felt like Mother Earth herself. I distinctly remembered having a conversation with a female colleague the first time I was in Nicaragua doing research. "That whole biological clock thing," she had said, "never happened to me." "Yeah," I agreed, "Me neither."

So what had happened?!

And the answer, of course, was Eduardo.

My transformation had occurred before getting pregnant, before hyperemesis, before labor, before birth. I felt like I finally had something to write about.

So I sat down at the computer while nursing Will and typed out the story one-handed. I kept it for many days, in fact, until the day before the contest deadline. Until the moment I entered, I wasn't sure that I was actually going to do it. I didn't think what I'd written was all that good. I didn't think it was going to win any prizes. I think I just wanted somebody else to read the story of Eduardo and what he had meant to me.

I sort of forgot about the whole thing. Then, this week, I received a message from Rixa herself, notifying me that I was a finalist. I was completely floored. And then, come to find out, I won. I still can't believe it.

All 5 of you who normally read my blog already know the story of Eduardo. But if you want to read it again, you can find it on Stand and Deliver.

Thanks for reading.

Illinois Marathon report (finally)

May 1st was the 2nd Annual Illinois Marathon. Being that I was pregnant and puking last year, I only managed the 5K. This year, when Boston filled up before I had registered, I immediately set my sites on the Illinois Marathon, right here in Champaign-Urbana. In many ways, I was more excited for Illinois than I had been for Boston. After all, it would be the first time I would be able to sleep in my own bed at my own house the night before a marathon.

Although I started running again 8 days after Will was born, training did not go smoothly. I had a newborn baby, for crying out loud. I defended, revised, and deposited my dissertation in the middle of all of this. There was snow and ice everywhere for the first couple months of training. And it was cold. I had injury after injury. Will started refusing to take a bottle, which made my long runs stressful.

A fast time was never my goal for the marathon. I just wanted to cross the finish line in one piece. Based on the pace I was able to maintain during training runs, I thought maybe I could do it in about 5 hours. And I sincerely hoped Will would take a bottle that day.

By the time the marathon rolled around, I was seriously burned out, and not just from taper madness. We have had a recent death in the family, and everything following that was (and continues to be) so, so awful. I wasn't sure if I would or even could still run the marathon after all of that. I finally decided to go ahead and do it because there was no real reason for me not to, but I just could have cared less about the marathon by this point.

The night before the race, I was only able to sleep about 4 hours, and it wasn't because of Will. He sleeps pretty well for the most part now. I was just too worked up in grief and sadness (I'm in the anger stage now, which is actually better in many ways than just being sad about it) and couldn't get my mind to shut down.

I felt like absolute and complete hell as Rob and I got ourselves up and around in the balmy pre-dawn of marathon day. In spite of the awful sadness in the week leading up to the marathon, I'd still been hungry and able to eat pretty well (I guess lactating and long-distance running will do that to you), but on the morning of the race, my stomach was completely uncooperative.

Rob's parents arrived to babysit while I was in the middle of a crying jag in the bathroom. We had about a half an hour before we had to leave the house, and Will was still sleeping. I finally woke him up to nurse him before we left, and he was most unhappy with me. He was groggy and kept falling back asleep while I was trying to nurse him.

Rob and I left the house and I felt completely unprepared to be running a marathon. I finally forced down a Clif Bar but felt for all the world like it would come back up again. I had grabbed a banana before we left the house, but I couldn't make myself eat it. I carried it around for a long time, thinking my stomach would feel better, but it didn't. I ended up running with the banana for the first 3 miles of the race and then ditching it along the side of the road. What I wished I'd brought with me was some water. I was really thirsty before the race began, which even in my hellish state I knew was a bad sign. By 7am, it was hot (how hot I don't know.... I was warm standing outside in just shorts and tank top) and ridiculously humid.

I wished Rob good luck and went to the start line, positioning myself around the 4:30 pace group and wondering if that was a huge mistake (i.e., was it too fast for me?). I stood there and waited forever. I wished that I wasn't so boxed in and could have found my friend Aimee who was running the half. I had lined up near where I thought she would be, hoping we could run together before the half marathon and full split off. But with 13,000 other runners out there, I never did find her.

The 5K runners were supposed to start at 7am, but they were delayed by around 10 minutes for some reason. Their delay translated into an even further delay for the marathon and half runners. By 20 minutes past start time, I was growing ridiculously impatient and frustrated. Every minute they delayed the start was another minute I had to spend away from my baby! Didn't these morons realize that? (I don't really think that the people in charge of the race are morons, but at the time I sure did.)

Finally without any warning, we were off. Rob (who was at the front of the pack) said they actually said "go" or something like that, but way back in 4:30-land I heard nothing other than the conversation of the two girls next to me who were doing the half and both had worn make up and were wondering if their mascara would run (to their credit, I'm sure they were really nice, I was just in no mood). Anyway, at first I wasn't sure if the race had actually started, because we were just sort of meandering forward in a slow walk, then stopping for several seconds, then meandering forward again, but eventually we reached the start line and could pick it up to a slow jog.

It was really crowded at first, and I had a lot of trouble getting into my own pace. In addition, I was very thirsty. I thought, surely there will be a water stop soon. I was running near the right side of the road and saw a hash mark with a number 1 in a circle, and I thought... was that really the Mile 1 marker? No other marking? I wouldn't have even seen it if I'd been in the center of the street. Surely there would be water soon. My mouth felt like there was cotton in it. Along Green Street, there was an area littered with used, empty paper cups-- remnants of some water station. Had there been a water station there for the 5K, and did they remove it for the marathon? Why on earth would they have done that?

Still running, still thirsty and still no water. Out of campus town now. A family had set up a small card table with a pitcher of water and some paper cups outside their house. I momentarily paused, thinking it was an official water stop, but then realized it was too small. Dozens of other runners had stopped there though. I went on past, thinking there was too little water for all those people and sure that there must be an actual water stop up ahead. I was momentarily distracted by a little boy who had come outside of his house and was playing the clarinet. Cute.

Finally I could see a water stop approaching. We had to be almost to the 3 mile mark now. And volunteers were handing out... empty paper cups. "Sorry, we're out of water," they were saying. "You've got to be kidding," I mumbled through parched lips. Just up ahead there were more volunteers, pouring water into our paper cups from a pitcher. I wondered how a single pitcher of water was going to fill the paper cups of hundreds of runners around me and how I would ever manage to get any. I had to wait in a jumbled line of thirsty runners, but eventually got a half a cup full of luke-warm water.

The next couple of water stops were the same... out of water, waiting in line to get a small amount. I was actually getting really panicky. The temperature was supposed to be in the high 70's by the end of the race, and I had been thirsty before it had even begun. I realized, this must be what it's like in the back of the pack. I sincerely hoped that Rob had avoided these problems, way out in front. He has a lot of trouble in the heat, and I knew he really, really needed to stay hydrated.

After the first 3 water stops, I never had another problem throughout the rest of the race. And the miles were marked really well after that too. By about Mile 7, they had gatorade as well, and at each station I took a full cup of water and a full cup of gatorade. I ended up staying really well hydrated, probably better than any other marathon I've done.

At Mile 8 we entered Meadowbrook Park, a location where I have run hundreds upon hundreds of miles in my life. It got really congested again. We'd gone from having the width of the street to run on to the width of a sidewalk. It was a little ridiculous. I'd been running 9:45 to 10-minute miles, but my first mile in the park was 10:30. After that I ran on the grass bordering the sidewalk, so as to not be way-layed by runners even slower than myself. Seriously, if they include Meadowbrook again next year, I think it would be better to do it after the half and full marathon runners split off from each other. Way out front where Rob was, he said he didn't have a problem, so I guess it was more of an issue for us in the back of the pack.

Near Mile 11, I got to see Will, which was by far the highlight of the marathon. He was out in his stroller with Rob's parents to watch the race. I stopped long enough to kiss him and make sure he was okay, and then was on my way. Seeing him bolstered me enough to run faster for the next several miles and ignore the fact that we had left the tree-lined shady streets of Urbana and were running in the direct sun.

Despite the heat and sun, I felt great (actually a lot better than I had at the beginning of the race). At some point in there I caught up with and then passed the 4:20 pace group, and I wondered if I could hang on. By Mile 18, I was starting to feel a little tired. Around Mile 19, we entered the one part of the course I had not run on before. I was still okay, but feeling just the slightest indication that I was beginning to enter the crazy zone. I had my cell phone with me and thought, hmmm, maybe I'll call my mom just to say hi. So I did. My mom thought it was a riot that I had called her while I was running the marathon. Pretty soon I was passing Mile 20 and then 21 and still had not gone over the edge into the crazies. My mom went to her computer and pulled up a map of the course so she could follow along.

I'd only meant to say hi, but by the time I was at Mile 23, my mom said we might as well keep talking until I crossed the finish line. She thought that would be cool to hear all the cheering as I ran through the stadium where the race ended. The course was fairly sparse by that time, but the other runners around me must have thought I was talking to myself and was crazy. I didn't really care though. I knew it was probably using up energy to talk (even though my mom was mainly talking/cheering for me and I was just listening), but for some reason I felt like that was what I needed to get to the end.

In retrospect, I feel really bad for keeping my mom on the phone with me for the last 7 miles of the marathon because I'm sure she had other things to do. It really helped get me to the end though. I never felt bad; I never had any of those ugly terrifying miles when you just want to lay down on the side of the road and cry. Somewhere towards the end, my friend Cara called me too. It was awesome, like having my very own cheering section. Miles 22 through 24 dragged on a bit, but I managed to keep it around 10:00 pace. I knew I would make it. It wasn't pretty, but the faster I ran, the faster I would be able to get back to Will. Once we finally turned onto Armory Street, I knew I was home-free. I have run this part of the course hundreds of times and felt like I was on my own turf.

We turned onto Hessel Blvd and I cruised to the end. Before I knew it, I was entering Memorial Stadium and running across the astroturf to the finish line. I had made it! My finish time was 4:16:10, which was almost an hour faster than I had thought I might be able to run. I guess the key to being happy with your marathon time is to set your expectations low.

I found Rob and his dad in the stadium and we regrouped to head home. I really just wanted to get out of there and get back to Will. We'd left around 6:30 in the morning to head over to the start line, and it was now after noon. That was the longest I'd ever been away from him. And considering that he hadn't nursed very well before we left, I was in a lot of pain and practically shooting out milk. I had to get home and feed that baby!

When we got back home, I found that my worst fear regarding Will and this marathon had come true. He had pretty much refused to eat anything, either baby food or milk, while I was gone. He nursed most of the afternoon and evening, which was fine by me because I needed to get rid of all that milk, and also I just got to sit there and hold him, which was what I wanted to do more than anything in the world.

I'm glad I ran the Illinois Marathon this year. It was my 9th marathon, and my first one back since having Will 8-1/2 months ago. I figured this would be my slowest marathon yet, but my finishing time was actually about 2 minutes faster than my first marathon, some 7 years ago. It was one of the smoothest marathons I've ever run--the volunteers were great, and I had my mom and Cara talking to me on the phone during the final miles. Plus, after having given birth, everything else feels kind of pale in comparison.

Anyway, everything is just kind of rough because of the awful sadness that is going on in my family right now. Running a marathon just seemed inconsequential. There are bigger things to focus on. Please continue to keep my sister and her husband (and my mom, who is the glue who holds us all together) in your thoughts right now.

Thanks for reading.

Awkward

I've always had trouble with my pelvis, but it has not been quite the same since well before giving birth. Until Will was about 3 or 4 months old, I constantly felt like my pelvis was about to snap in two. I suppose it didn't help matters that Will required being carried some 12 hours a day, or that his carseat weighs some 300 pounds, or that I tried to start running again 8 days after he was born.

I kind of just kept going, because really, what else can you do? I tried to build up my mileage to start marathon training, but nothing in my body felt like it was put together right. I started feeling pain in my IT band area, so I got a new pair of shoes (the ones I had been running on were quite old and worn out) and kept running. Things didn't get any better, and I realized that the pain was not in my IT band but more in my (very) lower back. I tried to run on Wednesday evening and just couldn't do it.

In desperation, I decided to try getting a "sports massage." Rob had good luck with one of these after his last marathon. I didn't really know what to do, so I just randomly called a place, they had a time for me that same day, and they said it was okay if I brought Will, so I went.

When I got there, the massage therapist turned out to be a guy-- a very young guy. He had a fair amount of piercings and his hair color was probably not natural. I felt like I was old enough to be his mother. It was kind of awkward.

He started massaging my aching lower back and couldn't hide his amazement at how messed up my pelvis was. Muscles, ligaments, and bones were apparently not where they were supposed to be. I always, always, always hold Will on my left side-- this is partially because my hips are crooked (and always have been) and I can actually balance him on my left hip, but cannot on my right. It is also because I'm right handed, and holding him on my left side frees my right hand. At any rate, Massage Boy said that my pelvis was definitely messed up from the way that I always hold the baby. The muscles on my left side were hyper-developed, whereas the muscles on my right side (the side that hurt) were practically atrophied in comparison. Such a huge imbalance had messed up my sacro-iliac joint and apparently everything else in the region.

The massage experience became more awkward when Massage Boy informed me that he did not have a client scheduled for the next session and that he would like to keep working on my gluteal region some more. No extra charge.

Will was being a trooper, but he was having trouble hanging in there by the end. Blue Seahorse ran out of batteries all of a sudden and was no longer playing music. It was time to go.

So I go out to the front desk to pay, and on the receipt there was a place to add a tip. Like when you use a credit/debit card to pay at a restaurant. I was like, oh crap, am I supposed to tip the guy? Never having had a sports massage before, I did not know what the etiquette was. I stood there, awkwardly, wondering if I could somehow quickly call somebody who was more experienced in these matters and ask them if I was supposed to tip and if so, how much.

I ended up leaving a tip, hoping it was the right thing to do. The guy did spend 45 minutes on me (continuing to work my gluteal region) instead of the half hour I was being charged for.

I am still in a fair amount of pain. It is really hard to pick up or hold Will, which is unfortunate for everyone. In fact, I think the sports massage actually made it worse. But worse in a way that seems like "this is going to get worse before it gets better" way, hopefully.

I am paranoid that I'm not going to make it to the marathon. Now I've got to delicately balance taking time off to heal versus continuing to build up my miles. If I take too much time off, I won't be prepared for the marathon. If I take too little time off, I will make the injury worse and not be able to run at all.

I'm trying not to be in a bad mood about this, but it isn't working so well.

Avocado

It was exactly a year ago, when, in my nausea and vomiting induced haze, I discovered that I could eat avocado. It made sense. Avocado is bland, tasteless, fatty, and doesn't require much chewing. I went crazy for avocado. It was all I wanted to eat. After a long day of raging nausea, I would wake up in the middle of the night with my stomach growling and eat a bowl of rice with mashed avocado. We spent a small fortune on groceries that month, and I gained a ton of weight.

I remember thinking that the baby (who was the size of a lemon at the time) must really love avocado. I imagined how sweet it would be to feed the baby avocado after he or she was born. It made me all teary-eyed. As I was reading up on introducing solid foods to babies, avocados were listed as one of the best foods to start with. And it just seemed so right. That would be the first solid food I would give the baby. It would be what this baby would want, I just knew it.

After a couple weeks of an avocado-only diet during my pregnancy, I abruptly got sick of avocado and haven't wanted any since then. That's how it is with a lot of the foods I ate when I was pregnant. Something would sound good to me and I could eat it for a little while, and then it would make me sick again (usually after I had just bought a whole bunch of it). Even now, 6 months after having the baby, I still can't eat those foods. I can't even think about them. To tell you the truth, it made me feel sick to even handle the avocado and mash it up for Will. It makes me wonder if you ever really get over hyperemesis. I'm getting kind of afraid that you don't. Maybe I'd rather not know.

Will seems somewhat ambivalent about the avocado. Certainly not as exuberant about it as he was when in utero. On the one hand, it is something to put in his mouth, which he likes. On the other hand, it is a new and different taste, which he isn't sure about. Feeding him avocado the past few days has definitely gone better than it could have, but in all, I'm not sure if he ingested even a pea-sized amount. I guess we'll just keep trying.

The things you remember

They say that time heals all wounds, and although I have mainly forgotten the pain of labor, there are other things that I have not forgotten. I had a pretty severe case of nausea and vomiting throughout my whole pregnancy (and even for a while afterwards). My midwife used the term "hyperemesis gravidarum" (HG) and she prescribed me anti-nausea medication that, in the end, only barely took the edge off. But I'm not so sure that I would go as far as calling what I had HG. It was bad nausea and vomiting, but what I went through wasn't nearly as bad as all-out HG. I've read some stories written by women who have suffered HG, and what they write chills me to the bone. I think what I had falls somewhere between the lines of severe morning sickness and very mild HG. Regardless, it sucked.

My sister had HG during her pregnancy. She was so sick, I don't know how she got through it. She was pregnant when I was doing my dissertation fieldwork on Ometepe-- a fairly remote volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua. At that time, I could only relate to her experience through the motion-sickness induced nausea I felt whenever we took the boat to the mainland. I thought of her, and how awful it must be, throughout our epic trip to the mainland on a day that was windier than it had first seemed. The excursion involved a nearly 3 hour bus ride to the port city of Moyogalpa, an hour and a half boat ride across choppy Lake Nicaragua, a 15 minute taxi ride to Rivas (where we got our supplies), and then doing the whole thing in reverse to get back home again. The boat ride back across the lake was brutal. I puked, I moaned, I clenched my fists, I survived only by intense meditation and the power of yoga breathing. I thought, it can't be like this for my sister, can it? No one could survive feeling like this all the time.

Well, it was like that. I took medication that made the nausea just tolerable enough that I somewhat retained the will to live, but it did not make life enjoyable in the least. It didn't go away right after Will was born either. Even now, almost 5 months out, there are still so many things that make me feel sick.

During the latter half of my pregnancy, I had a dentist appointment. I was more than a little nervous about going, for fear I'd puke on them while they were working on my teeth, but I was even more afraid to not go-- who knew what kind of awful state my teeth would be in from all that puking. As I entered the office and began to hesitantly explain my situation to the dental hygienist, I was surprised that she knew all about this condition. The receptionist at the practice had suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum during her pregnancy, and everyone in the office knew how horrible it could be. "You should talk to her," the hygienist told me. "She was so sick. She lost 20 pounds and couldn't work for months. Her daughter is 6 years old now, and she doesn't ever want to have any more children." I did talk to her on my way out, and I could see how haunted she still was.

There are things you remember and things you forget. I am surprised that I've already forgotten how bad labor was, despite the fact that while I was experiencing it, I considered it to be excruciating. I am nowhere near forgetting hyperemesis. And judging from the few women I've talked to who have had HG, you never do. Rob (who I think might still be traumatized from witnessing Will's birth), was surprised when I told him I would rather go through birth again than experience hyperemesis. As SL's wife pointed out, the pain of labor isn't enough to make you not want to have more babies. I'm pretty sure that hyperemesis is. If I ever forget about it, I think it will be a long time from now. At the moment, I haven't even stopped having flashbacks.

Thanks for reading.

The things you forget

Will was born around 4-1/2 months ago. The whole thing took a lot out of me. It made me wonder how on earth our species has persisted for some 6 million years on this planet: why would any woman go through this thing again after knowing all it entailed?

They say that you forget the pain of labor, but it didn't seem possible that I would ever forget it. I did it without any pain medication, all 23 hours of it, and I felt every last thing. It was not the type of transcendent experience I had read about in Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. I never noticed the natural endorphins my yoga teacher had assured us would kick in. In fact, it was flat-out the scariest experience I have ever had. I didn't know it was possible for a human being to scream as loud as I did.

But then when Will was about 3 months old, I realized I couldn't quite describe what a contraction felt like anymore. And gradually, I stopped reliving the whole traumatic thing every minute of every day. While we were out for a walk in the neighborhood one afternoon, I actually said to Rob, "You know, it wasn't that bad. I could probably do it again if I had to." He looked at me like I had lost my mind and said something to the effect of, "Are you freaking kidding me?" I guess the experience wasn't far enough in the past for him to forget.

At my dissertation defense party a few weeks ago, I was talking about Will's birth with SL's wife and some of the other graduate students from my department. I marveled again at how there came to be some 6 billion people on the planet when the process of giving birth is our only means of multiplication. SL's wife, who has had two children herself, replied that there are many reasons why someone would choose to not have any more children after the first one, but that remembering the pain of labor wasn't one of them. Maybe you forget, or maybe it just stops mattering.

For the longest time after Will's birth, I looked back on the whole experience with so much negativity. I felt like I had fallen apart during his birth--what with my stalling at 5 cm for 4 hours and then with all the screaming I did. But finally, enough time has passed that I am beginning to look at the positive aspects instead of just the negative. No matter how ugly it got, I did it, and on my own terms. I'm just on the cusp of starting to see it as pretty amazing.

Thanks for reading.

Some pertinent background information

A lot of things took place before I started this blog, and I wrote about them elsewhere.

First of all, I got pregnant. I wish I could say that I was a glowing and radiant, but unfortunately I was not. I had severe nausea and vomiting the whole time (and even for a while after). You can read the highlights (if they can so be called?) of this journey here and here.

Then, I gave birth. It was an epic experience, is all I can say. The whole long story is in four parts, but if you just want to cut to the chase, we had a baby. We named him William Miles, and the minute I laid eyes on him, I knew he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

• Part 1: Tuesday's Child?
• Part 2: Wednesday's Child?
• Part 3: Waterlogged and Tender
• Part 4: Aftermath

The story didn't end there. The baby wouldn't stop crying, ever. Nursing was terrible. We were seeing a lactation consultant twice a week, but nothing was getting better. Finally, our lactation consultant suggested that Will's crying was because he was hungry, and she began treating me for a low milk supply (hence the impetus for this blog). That part of the story begins here.