Milk From God's Nose -- Orginally Sent DEC 9, 2005

Ok gang...some of you have heard this story already...some of you have not...In any case, I hope for your sake that you are sitting down. Ok...no, that won't work...get out of your chair. Lie down on the floor...tie yourselves down...Just Trust me.


Two and a half months ago, I sneezed. Those of you who have witnessed my sneezes know they are just short of gael-force winds...people have nearly been blown through walls, small countries have been wiped off the map. Those of you who have been close to me when I have sneezed know that I foolishly try to restrain my sneezes in a misguided attempt to not send you through those very walls. In this case, I sneezed, I pulled a muscle in my lower abdomen.. We've been remodeling our Wallyworld, going Superstore, and I'm working in the Lawn and Garden/Seasonal department. This area has the most movement with regards to shelf stocking and so forth, so obviously, I've been doing a lot of lifting, tramping around on the cement floor for nine hours a day -- so yes...I was achy, I had back pain, big old ouchy cashier feet, and yeah, I probably overdid it. I also felt like a helium balloon, as I had been attempting to eat healthier, and I was eating many veggies. (trust me, the story will get better in a moment). Last week, I could barely get in and out of the car...if I came home after work, I just wanted to curl up in the corner of the couch and I couldn't move beyond that. Most of the muscle pain I was having was located in my lower abdomen where I had pulled that muscle when I sneezed...and as I am on high blood pressure pills, and they said that if you had prolonged pain in the abdomen that you should have it checked out, I finally stopped stalling and went to my doc.

The exam did not go well. First, I had gained eight or nine pounds...so I began the process by glaring at everything for the next twenty minutes until the doc came in to do the actual checkup. I explained about the ouchiness, and as I flopped back on the table, she got this really nervous look in her eyes. Now, this is a lady who normally the calmest, most unflappable, unexcitable person I've ever come across. All of a sudden, she's whipping around the room, trying every test, blood work, everything. I had a solid mass located just under my ribs. When she pushed on it, it yanked on the hurting muscles. I hadn't worried about the mass at the time, because it seemed to have appeared about the time of my sneeze...Again, I thought it was some variant of the pulled muscle thing...it didn't hurt, it didn't do anything...it was just there...sometimes it seemed more noticeable than others. Then she whipped out a stethescope and tried to listen to it. I had not yet hooked up the sound system, I guess, and she heard nothing but me. She thought it could have been a gravid uterus, but she heard no heart sounds. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she did a quick check and saw nothing that would confirm that I was inhabited...this led her to believe that it was much scarier than a pulled muscle. As a formality, she gave me a pregnancy test, did more blood work, and set up an appointment to have my stomach and pelvic area cat-scanned to determine what the mass might be...Silly me, I didn't know you could cat-scan anything but a head. It could have been a cyst, but by the end of the exam, I was beginning to wonder if I was looking at the really, really terrifying stuff...like the nasty embodiment of my astrological sign. I ended up cowering in a corner for a bit, and it took me an additional twenty minutes to calm down enough to drive home. Before I left, they told me to check in later that night and they would confirm what tests they could. They also asked me if I wanted some Zanex or something to get through the next couple of days until the remainder of the labwork came back...by then I was ok...I said no...I jokingly asked if I could have a few for my husband. A delayed doctor's visit for a pulled muscle would get me a few pointed looks from him and a few minor "I told you so's" -- I would have felt shame and then been more responsible in the future. But this.... In the last couple of months, Jon had lost a dear friend to an aggressive stomach cancer, and his dad was just released from the hospital after he chose to ignore a skin infection that ended up going berserk, and now I was looking at something that really seemed to have very little to do with pulled muscles. I was trying very hard not to think...it was the only way I could keep myself calm. I was not, at the time, able to comprehend how many "I told you so's..." this would rate on the scale, but as it turned out later, I would have been wiser to taken them up on their offer of Zanex.


At four-thirty, I had picked Jon up from work, and I called the doc for some results...and then everything froze. The test came back positive. What? Which test? Which test?!!! "The pregnancy test is reading positive, but there were no heartsounds...I can only think that maybe you had a pregnancy that didn't complete itself...it's non-viable, and you'll need to go to the emergency room to have it removed immediately." Um, sure, yeah...emergency room...yeah, we can do that. So we whipped around and dashed to Good Sam's to do whatever needed to be done. I donned the latest in hospital fashion -- faded with just a hint of personal air-conditioning, flopped on yet another cold table and cue the first ER nurse... a sweet little blond creature who put a stethescope on the mass under my ribs and smiled and said, "So, do you want to hear the heartbeat?" Time begins to slow down. "I'm sorry ma'am...I think you have a pre-recorded message in your stethescope...There's not supposed to be a heartbeat..." She frowned, looked confused, handed me the stethescope...and there was a swishy sound, a thuddy, watery, swishy sound. I vaguely remember throwing the stethescope at Jon who listened and then looked as though the floor had fallen out from under him...but wait...there's more!!!

The next person to enter the room was a doctor who stood at the doorway, and who could tell __from the doorway__ "Oh, nah, we don't even need an ultrasound...You're almost at full-term." Cue the two squad vehicles bringing four accident victims, and for the next five hours, Jon and I were left to our own devices. We used this time wisely, as you can imagine...after years of telling everyone that we were not the parenting type, that we didn't want to share our toys, that we questioned the logic of trying to raise the fuzzy cats, and that I can't keep goldfish alive (I even killed the goldfish screensaver on my computer!!!!...it was horrible, I worked on another computer for days and days...came back to mine, and there was my screensaver fish, bobbing at the top of the screen) -- those five hours were spent in rigorous debate over which of us got to throw up or pass out first (in fact, this is actually a topic still under discussion, as we have not yet determined who has won that debate). Close to 9, 9:30, we were discharged from G.S (with the words "NEEDS EMOTIONAL SUPPORT" in hefty black lettering on the discharge paperwork) and they transferred us to Bethesda, where we were admitted onto the baby floor for a full gamut of testing. In fact, I had eight and a half months of tests to catch up on. That's right. Eight and a half months. It would not be confirmed until the next day that I was in the high thirty-weeks of end run pregnancy. Oddly enough, now that the kid was discovered, it chose to uncurl itself from under my ribs and commence stretching, kicking, and basically doing the Dance of Joy around my internal organs. Sleep wasn't an option the first night...and it wasn't much easier the second. I can tell you that IT is a he, and he's currently 7 lbs., 3 oz., and is expected to join the party officially on New Years Eve. Yes, Nancy, that meant that Wild-Man Doug could dress up with surgical gloves and mask and deliver this critter while Dick Clark dropped his ball on tv, and you passed out the appetizers at the party...(I hope you'll forgive us if we are unable to attend this year...I can only say that something has, um, come up...). His name is Joshua Chamberlain, and he is expected to gain a pound a week for the next three weeks -- Given this kid's sense of humor so far, and his flair for the dramatic, we fully believe he will be at least the New Year's baby in Z- (but I can see him trying for the National Title), which means that anyone who hasn't had a chance to laugh or choke (or both) at this situation should have the opportunity to commemorate the occasion in big bold black headline print. Yep...we have three weeks to play catch up. Instant baby...just add stress and stir. The kid has my timing and has begun his life (forgive the phrasing, but it's appropriate) as a smart-ass -- so he also has an appropriate inheritance from his father. It bodes not well for us...if he's outsmarted us in fetu, how are we supposed to keep up with him when he's a teenager... I demand a recount...Something!!!

SO you may be asking yourself, how in the world can a kid sneak under the radar of two such obsessively un-parentlike people like ourselves? How is it that we have in my belly what one usually finds on the cover of the Weekly World News or Enquirer (Woman Gives Birth in Supermarket -- "I had no idea I was pregnant..." Elvis reputed to be the father...). I have been on the shot since 93...it's 99.999999 etc. % accurate...every symptom of pregnancy is mimicked by the shot. Even the doc assigned to us (and he is a hoot) has only seen one other couple on the shot that still conceived...we didn't have a chance to find out yet how far along they were, but given the reaction of every SINGLE person in the hospital, we think we have them beat. So I had swollen feet and ankles...I was on my feet all day. So there was weight gain...it's the holidays. The only symptoms I had were slight muscle pain in my stomach (again, no more severe than a minor muscle pull), and that helium feeling that I thought was one green pepper too many. We were under a doctor's care the whole time... and she didn't catch it. I even considered that the two symptoms could be related...there was one other thing, a ripple on my left side from waist to rib cage. Again, not to put too fine a point on it, I thought that was related to the helium feeling...every one I talked to who had been pregnant said they got played like a drum from the inside, and I never felt that at all. The ripples seemed to be muscle spasms just under the skin, but not much more than you'd experiece if someone were tickling you with a feather. The net search I did on the three symptoms (muscle spasms on left side, bloated feeling, slight abdomen pain) led me to believe it might be diverticulitis...which was treated with an increased fiber intake, and or surgery if it didn't correct itself. For every clue and sign there was a valid reason not to believe it was pregnancy. Even the big hint, which would have been the monthly ouchiness, didn't play a part as I haven't had to deal with that for three years thanks to the shot. No morning sickness, no nothing. Just sneaky kid.


At any rate, this is where we are now...I've been consigned to bedrest (BLAH!!!) -- more because I don't think they know what else to do with me than because it's actually necessary. I've made it through day one of maternity leave and I am bored out of my head. I will have two doc appointments a week, and they will treat me as though I'm overdue, as we don't really know when Josh was conceived. I don't feel any different, really. Josh is hopping around and stretching out like a little frog, and I'm trying to figure out how to remake our back storage room into a baby room in a matter of days. Jon is still very much stunned, but sleep and kind words are helping his perspective. In a major step...one that actually almost happened immediately, he went from calling it an it to "Josh" -- which I'm taking as a good sign. We know that this situation, bizarre as it is, is also pretty darned funny, so please laugh or choke or do what you need to do -- believe me I understand...we are, however, trying to get our heads around this, so we are asking for calm, cool heads around us. If anyone acts hyper and overly excited, we'll react to it by trying to cower and hide. So far, everyone's been very kind, and Mom has already put the C- teachers on notice, my work and Jon's are plotting for us...it would seem somehow that between all the good folks wanting to help us out that we may not want for anything until Josh is in college. By some miracle, there are apparently two bassinets and a crib already in play and clothing and toys and stuff, and the only thing I've done as a mom-to-be is learn to sleep on my left side. With that being the case, and with us having a) absolutely no clue as to what baby things we will suddenly have and b) very little room to put great quantities of baby-spoiling things, we must respectfully and with the greatest appreciation ask everyone to use as much restraint as possible. We respect everyones' right to spoil him out of his gourd, and we would not willingly stand in anyone's way. That would be wrong. What little information we have about parenthood has led us to believe that not-spoiling a baby would be an impossible request to for anyone to fulfill anyway. If you want your chance, I'm sure you'll have it...just give us a few weeks to see where we are. At this time, what we really need is as much good advice and prayer support as possible.

Tease me if you want to, but be gentle with Jon...I'm used to having a support network...he's used to flying without a net (and right now, he still thinks the ground is coming up very quickly). The theory (well, it's everyone else's theory) is that we will do ok as parents...but keep in mind, Josh has had a headstart of nearly a year on us, and we will need some time to catch up. We have adopted a sort of gallows humor that might not seem appropriate for anyone else listening, but it's what's getting us through this...if we keep laughing, we can keep ourselves on just this side of hysteria, and the terror of it all won't feel so overwhelming. The second day of the observation, Jon asked me how we got ourselves into this.How could this happen to us? My response was as follows: "Well, sometimes, when a man and woman really love each other, they cuddle each other in a very special way...She says Oh, my God, Oh my God...and this is followed a couple of months later by 'You evil rat-weasel, don't you ever touch me again.. ' with various aspersions cast on his ancestry thrown in for good measure.' Jon, never to be outdone, of course followed this up with the Bill Cosby reference, "Then my wife stood up... in the stirrups, and on the next contraction, she told everybody in the delivery room that my parents were never married. " I was drinking water at the time, and inhaled it and nearly died choking and laughing. Josh responded to this by kicking me in the ribs to get me to chill out. Apparently he will be the designated straight man in our family.

We have decided to think as far ahead as the delivery...Jon is considering the evil video camera, but we have decided that our baby movie should be slightly more interesting than the usual baby movie...after all, he has shown no inclination to behave like the usual baby so far...We intend to insert scenes from Alien and Spaceballs at strategic moments, and we feel that for theme music, we should use the song from Jaws. (Da dum....da dum...dadadadadada dada DAHHHH da da DAAAAHHHHH -- Just when you thought it was safe to go into your doctor for some stronger anti-inflamatories and a good dose of prescription strength Rolaids!!!!).

Well, this has been my week...how about yours?

Love you all.
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