Closing Doors

Someone I know is pregnant. This statement is becoming increasingly rare as the years keep marching on in my life.  It used to be that everyone I knew was in a couple.  Then, couple by couple, everyone seemed to be getting engaged, and then married.  Back in “my day” (intone the Old Lady In Me [...]

Trying Again

When I was younger I thought that being thinner would solve all of my problems.  I would be instantly surrounded with friends, boys would want to go out with me, and my crazy life would somehow find order and purpose.  It’s a struggle I have fought my whole life, this inner dialouge I have with [...]

Speech Therapy

“No language at all?  Not even sounds that don’t really sound like words but he uses the same one for the same situations?” I racked my brain trying to think of something, anything, my son could do that would qualify as him trying to communicate with me.  He would cry, he would make noises but [...]

How’d He Get This Number?

“Hello?”  The phone on the bedside table was loud, and I answered it on the second ring.  Fortunately, I was alone in the hospital room, so there was no one to bother, but its loudness still seemed to echo through the sterile quiet of the hospital hallways. A familiar, warm voice on the other end [...]

Inconvenient

It felt all too familiar.  I was laying on an ultrasound table at our doctor’s office, waiting for the bad news to be delivered. The doctor had told me to come in immediately for an ultrasound of my uterus upon hearing my symptoms; waking up with chills, bad cramps, heavy bleeding, huge clots, and a [...]

Not Quite Right

“You don’t look so good,” said Dale on his way through our kitchen to the basement. I was sitting on the sofa, Michael in my arms.  I’d spent the morning getting Zach off to school, playing with Melinda, nursing Michael.  Dale and the subcontractors were furiously trying to finish our basement, since they’d already blown [...]

Late Nights

I woke up to feed my baby, teeth chattering uncontrollably.  It was January, after all, but I never remembered being quite this cold in our home, even in the dead of winter.  Cincinnati had a warmer climate than the one we’d grown up in, and my heaviest sweatshirts sat in the back of my closet, [...]

Not the Same

This one was not the same. I’d been through labor twice before, and this one just didn’t feel the same. With Zachary, I’d entered the hospital ten days late, in early labor, not dilated at all.  The doctors had administered pitocin to speed things along, which led to quickly strong contractions that lasted and lasted [...]

Scheduling

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”  I asked R, incredulous. We’d quietly made the rounds through the holidays, everything quietly subdued in the aftermath of 9/11.  We’d spent Thanksgiving with our families in Michigan but had decided Christmas should be spent close to home, since my due date was in mid January.  After my speedy [...]

Never Apologize

“Well?”  I asked, impatiently. It all felt like deja vu, but drawn out in slow motion.  I’d called the doctor from California, but of course I was in a new practice that I’d visited all but one time; and even then, I hadn’t seen a doctor, just a nurse practitioner.  They gave me the standard [...]