High-Risk Pregnancy and Feeeelings

Well, it's back. Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy, ICP. (In the past I've generally called it Cholestasis, which seems clearer than using an abbreviation, but... ICP is shorter to type.) As of a few weeks ago, the night of July 28th.

No, I haven't been back to the hospital yet. This is from my induction with Gracie. It just seemed... fitting.

Sorry, this is going to be long. Very. This should probably be split into four, but it all goes together so I'm going to leave it together, sorrynotsorry. I have a lot of feelings, and it seems like a lot has happened in the last few weeks. And some backstory is necessary. The "tl;dr:" version? High-risk pregnancy MESSES WITH YOUR HEAD. 'Tis a roller coaster.

Marian Call in Concert

Bl... Blogger... eevil... *sputter*

I wrote the beginning of a draft of this post a long time ago. A loooooong time ago. Back when I was pregnant (that makes it over seven months ago at the least), and I think before some of the pregnancy real craziness started (which I couldn't link to because I haven't truly written about it yet, so that's a link to the intro). Which makes it longer ago. Maybe even not all that long after the concert itself. Which was last July.

Then, last month, I finally wrote a continuation of the draft, at 750 Words. Today (er, "today" when I was writing this part...), I copied and pasted that continuation into Blogger to join the beginning of the draft. Noticed that it wasn't formatted quite right, so hit "undo" -- I was going to go paste into Notepad and then copy and paste into Blogger. That always works, it just needs some odd formatting stripped off.

But. When I hit "undo," for some reason the whole thing disappeared instead of just the part I'd pasted in. I hit "undo" again -- there was one time, as I recall, that this happened before, but for whatever reason the main part reappeared with a second "undo." No go this time.

You'd think I would be smart at this point and "redo." Well, maybe I remembered to try somewhere in there, but also somewhere in the mess the blighter decided to automatically save itself. The empty version. I closed. I reopened. Nothing. By the time I used "Revert to draft," (which you have to close to use, it's in the screen with the list of posts, not on the editing post screen) it had decided the "draft" was post-disaster. I didn't have that original draft beginning backed up anywhere else. As you have probably surmised.

AAAaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. *HEADDESK*

The thing of it is, it wasn't even that long or much. I know I had a basic structure thought out, and a bit of intro. But because it's been SO LONG since I wrote the thing... gaaaah.

Sigh. So my crazy late post about a concert that I wasn't remembering as well anymore (I mean, I remember it well enough. Just not blog post well.) but I was going to still post up because it's still worth sharing even in a very imperfect state... That's all still true, it's just even more imperfect now.

It was something about why it's awesome to see Marian Call in concert, and not just listen to her CDs. There were multiple reasons. I think it went something like this: 1. Awesome venue. 2. Sound quality and general live music experience. 3. Meeting her in person. Maybe?? I mean, that more or less fits with the draft continuation I have -- I know the beginning of the draft had some points written down, but didn't make it far in elaborating the points, so the continuation finished the elaboration of point one and then went on to two and three. I think. And that looks like what I'm elaborating. Wish I could remember the actual headings... and the intro. *grouch grouch grouch*

Okay. I'm over it. Really, I am. Marian Call concert was awesome and all that!

I took a friend, @Joi_the_Artist, for her birthday. A selfish, selfish birthday gift. Um. We both enjoyed it.

Awesome Venue

As you can maybe kind of tell from the picture in the post where I introduced the Marian Call series, it was a garden concert. I mean, it was at a coffeehouse, but in an outdoor seating area they had. It was beautiful and small. I saw a hummingbird during one song. Lovely. I doubt I'll ever go to a concert where I can listen from that close to the performers again. Maybe even not at future Marian Call concerts, even though she likes house concerts, because I was in the front of the front row.

How can one be at the front of a front row, you ask? (No, really, you do. Hey, ask or else.)

Well, (And here's where we switch to the draft continuation... yay! Kind of... I mean, it's not a continuation I was super happy with, but... meh.) um.

As I was saying, well, we were seated around tables, and though we pulled the chairs out to make wobbly almost straight rows, they weren't quite straight. So I wasn't just in the front row, but farther forward in that front row, by dint of being seated more beside a table than behind it.

Live Music Experience (or whatever this heading was)

Of course, live music is always better, anyway. I mean, unless the musician isn't very good, and uses autotune or something, and fifty bajillion gazillion takes to get one that actually sounds decent? Um, not the case for Marian Call.

On the road Marian Call only has a guitarist instead of all the instrumentation on her CDs, but she does so much with her voice alone that that isn't really so much a liability as... different. I like having the opportunity to experience her music both ways. Check out her live album to see what I mean.

And, then, the live album shows off another thing -- her intros! It's really fun to hear her talk about the songs. She pointed out for us before "The Avocado Song," as a California audience, that it's much harder to find good citrus fruits or avocados in Alaska than in California. They're a risk -- expensive, and you cut into them not knowing what you're going to get, a bad one or a good one. In the many times I'd listened to that song, somehow, I'd never thought of that aspect of the metaphor!

The ability to tailor a show to the live audience is also a good thing. Those moments when a train whistle interrupts a song and you wait and laugh together. The requests people make, the camaraderie of it all. It's a good time.

Meeting Marian Call

Speaking of which, I had a chance to meet her in person. Shortly after the event I think I remembered every word she said to me, which maybe I should have journaled before I forgot. (Nooo, I'm not creepy...) I wouldn't have blogged it all, but at any rate, as I've said before, she's a very nice person. When I told her my twitter handle (/blog name) she remembered who I was, and the same with @Joi_the_Artist. She signed our stuff, and sang happy birthday to Joi in... I forget what language. A different language. It was cool.

Loot.

I told her which songs my baby especially seemed to enjoy, based on the kicking ("Highway Five" and... "In the Black," I think?) and she commented that it made sense for her to like the ballads, the higher and slower songs. If I'm recalling correctly.

(In retrospect, it was probably because I particularly liked those songs -- since then I read a study somewhere or other that babies will react in utero even when their mothers listen to music with headphones -- they're not always reacting to the music itself, so much as to the mothers' happiness at the music.)

Anyway, basically, a good time was had by all. She's going to be in the area again this month, and I'm going again! Check out her concert schedule, and who knows? If you go to one in Southern California, maybe I'll see you there! Meanwhile, I do believe I have some music to go listen to.

We couldn't resist. It was tricky with a camera phone and the lack of lighting to get the whole word in frame AND make me visible (let alone to get a very good picture), but Joi made a valiant attempt.

"Some of the Pregnancy Stories" Part 1... or "A Link" or... Something.

Back in December I said I was going to do this. I said, "So. Childbirth story. But that story begins with some of the pregnancy stories. For those who aren't friends with me on facebook, I will try to begin at the beginning. So. That will come next, I think."

I mean, I sort of started to tell some of it. I gave you facebook pregnancy status updates, and a post about being overwhelmed and pregnancy and anemia. But I didn't really start the stories yet.

So. (I know, I keep saying that.) Here's a start. A real start.

Or... not. I mean, I wrote out a whole post that was the beginning, but it was 1000 words long, and most people who recommend anything about blogging seem to recommend writing posts at half that length (at most). So I'm chopping this one in half.

(Kind of. It's sorta like a starfish. You chop off limbs and it regrows them. But it is smaller, at the moment. 

"Quick! Hit publish before it grows so big it kills us all, like some horrible video game dungeon boss with regen capabilities!")

Hey, on the bright side, the rest is already written, so it'll be super extra easy to actually post later. On the less bright side, it's still barely the intro to the stories. But... if you want to read more, there's more! Lots more! Yay?

Anywho, this first half is a bit more about why I'm doing this. (And the first half is also looong, preambly intro, evidently. Also not supposed to do that. And parentheses. John says I use too many of them. Basically I'm a bad person. Er, blogger.) I know. I'm sorry, I do run on. But there's a link involved that is so very good. I promise. (Warning: little bit of language, though. For those who care.)

Somehow, one can live for almost thirty years and never think much about or hear a description of what a contraction feels like. At least in modern times.

As Pamela Ribon said in this amazing, wonderful, that exactly post, "It is incredible to me that when I sit with three friends who aren’t pregnant who are asking me what it’s like, that all I’m doing is teaching them things they didn’t know that I didn’t know either before getting pregnant. That four women can be all way above twenty-five years old and not know the kinds of things that happen to us when every single one of us is here because someone went through this for us. Why don’t we all know what happens to people when they get pregnant?"

And, "Why is pregnancy such a combination of mystical and disgusting that we choose to not talk about it? You can’t get pregnant from learning about it. Can you? I’m not sure anymore. Because I didn’t know until I was pregnant that there was a chance my stomach muscles would separate. I would’ve like to have been informed beforehand. There were sixteen pages of 'Here are all the ways you might get hurt or die' that I had to read through before I could skydive. I had to watch videos and sign consent forms to sit in a helicopter for twenty minutes. I had to have two forms of insurance to play roller derby. But at no point did a doctor or a teacher or a fellow woman stop to say, 'Hey, listen. Before you get pregnant, you should know that it could cause you to lose feeling in both legs for months every time you try to sleep. Your feet could grow and they’ll never go back to the size they once were. You might get massive nosebleeds that make you think you have brain cancer, but you don’t — you’re just pregnant. It’s why you can’t stop crying and get panic attacks when you’re in a passenger seat on the highway.'"

Here I am, talking about it. Well, somewhat. Virtually. Or... I will.

Oh, and those bits above that I quoted are more serious bits. The post overall is hilarious. I especially like one bit in the middle of her last Maya Angelou-ish contraction poem... go read it yourself. Then you'll ask which part I was talking about, and I'll say, "That part, of course!" and you'll say, "That's what I thought, I just wanted to be sure."

Moms out there, what do you wish you'd been told?

Mild Burns and Automotive Air Conditioning (With Many Parenthetical Explanations [Or at Least One Multi-Layered Parentheses {Slightly Inspired by Robin McKinley's Blog "*with footnotes"}])

You know how when you have a mild burn (or a not-so-mild one that's a little older and healing), after you've already held it under cold water for a while you can do other things and carry on with your life for a time without holding ice to it or putting it under cold water again, but eventually it hurts more and the pain grows and grows until finally you go to the sink?  Or something like that?  Well, it turns out that, for mild burns at least (How mild, you ask?  Well, instead of burning your hand or arm on a freakishly hot pan or other metallic something, you just poured near-boiling hot water [or to be slightly more accurate, tea] on it. That is all. [For a better idea of how near-boiling it was, here's the {entirely theoretical, of course} sequence of events: You boil water in a kettle. When it's ready, you turn off the burner and pour the water into a teapot with a tea bag inside. Then, directly after that second step, you pour the tea onto your hand. {And no, don't ask me how one manages to do that accidentally when the tea hasn't steeped and it's not yet time to pour yourself a nice cup -- I'm not going to tell you.}]), your car's air conditioning works almost as well. A good thing too, because holding a cold water bottle on your hand is a little awkward to do while driving. But all you have to do is turn on the air, hold your burn directly in front of the vent, and voila, it feels as good as if the air were water. I'm not sure the effects last as long, but that might just be because of the general warmth of the car, or the direct light of the sun, or some such.

That is all.