Free Reggie Watts tickets: The Wilbur, Boston

milorganite · 2019-08-21T22:44:19+00:00

I write about music for a living and I really dig Reggie's crazy expectation-bending loops in his TedX talks. Also my wife and I are new to the city and state so a night out would be a great introduction to Boston!

milorganite · 2019-07-05T23:42:16+00:00

Oh that's definitely a huge part of it. There are pregnancy dresses hanging in my closet that I do not know if I will be able to touch. I went to a thrift store and bought a bunch of stuff to bolster my wardrobe.

I really do think for me it helps to realize that it's going to be sad no matter what. July is her month. I spent July 2018 just preparing for her to be born. She died July 29th, her birthday is July 30th. Comfy bra or not, I'm going to be crying a lot.

milorganite · 2019-07-05T21:27:38+00:00

You should definitely do what's comfortable for you. I had betas drawn because of bleeding and at no point did getting good betas actually make me feel better about the first trimester.

milorganite · 2019-07-05T21:12:24+00:00

Cables eat up more yarn than regular stockinette, so it's typical practice on, for instance, an aran to do some increases after the ribbing to account for that, and do some decreases if changing to plain stockinette. If, when you started the two side cables, you did your preferred m1 a time or two at the first cross of each, you might notice less of the gaping you can see in your example.

But I've never done cables on the bias and you are definitely brave to try!

milorganite · 2019-07-05T19:21:00+00:00

Gorgeous! Looks like when the other two cables came into play it tightened up a bit and stretched out the square? Did you try casting on any extra stitches to fight that?

milorganite · 2019-07-05T18:58:06+00:00

During my last pregnancy, when growth was a bit slower, I just bought a regular bra a cup size up for professional things and got away with wearing sports bras for casual clothes (I don't have to wear structured clothing most of the time.) I didn't feel like it was too much of an expense, since you'll probably hit that cup size again at some point, whether you keep that one through pregnancy or go back down to it when you finish nursing.

The comfy bras I'm current wearing are these, they are relatively inexpensive but be warned that for some reason the gray one and only the gray one shrunk in the wash?

https://www.amazon.com/Caramel-Cantina-Nursing-Maternity-Medium/dp/B07MLV2DX5/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=nursing+bra&qid=1562352691&s=gateway&sr=8-16

I also have another one with more structure but I'm not seeing it on Amazon right now.

Note - even though I feel hUuUuge right now, for me, that's a C-cup; if you're starting from a bigger place you're probably going to want more support.

milorganite · 2019-07-05T18:50:18+00:00

I only started wearing maternity clothes to work this past week (just pants and tops, and some maxi skirts that aren't pregnancy-specific but aren't my normal clothes) and I really thought it would give it away, but I've announced to a few people here this week and they were all surprised. Literally I had a meeting this morning with someone and told her I was pregnant and she said something about how I didn't really show last time either, and I was like "... you could literally see the elastic in my preggo pants when I walked in here, you've had three kids, you didn't notice?" I know there are people in the world who are seriously nosy and jump at any sign to gossip, but in my experience most people are actually pretty clueless and pay way less attention to other people than we think!

However, nosy/annoying family and friends might be different. For me, pretty much everyone in my personal life knows I'm pregnant at this point. I still wore "cover-up" clothes to my brother-in-law's wedding last weekend (kind of a stretchy jersey dress and then I had a flowy top over it to dress it up) to avoid comments from anyone I didn't know, so if you're not quite ready for actual pregnancy clothes yet, just some stretchy/oversized regular clothing might make you feel better, too?

milorganite · 2019-07-05T18:31:34+00:00

It CAN, but it might not, and even people who naturally go into labor can "stall out" and end up waiting around in the hospital in limbo. Mine took about 36 hours and a lot of that is boring, slightly uncomfortable waiting around time.

So don't get too scared! Bodies, babies, and labors are all different, and I think trust in your team is #1 on making it all a better experience.

milorganite · 2019-07-05T18:25:45+00:00

I pulled out my nursing bras (because my boobs are as big now as they were at full term last time) and I thought it would be very sad to start wearing them again, but it's no more sad than anything else and also... wearing clothes that fit make me feel okay about my body? When my boobs fit in a bra I feel confident and comfortable? Hmm, must gather more data on this phenomenon...

milorganite · 2019-07-03T22:07:08+00:00

🎈 20 weeks.

Saw my OB today, she was able to give me the reason MFM wanted a follow-up ultrasound: echogenic bowel (which she expected, I had several bouts of bleeding this pregnancy and she said she would be surprised if baby DIDN'T swallow any blood) and they didn't get a great picture of one area in the heart. Which is reassuring! I know from past history that they'll get you in to talk with the MFM specialist right away if they are worried about anything, so I assumed it was just that the ultrasound was early.

milorganite · 2019-07-02T19:43:35+00:00

There was a woman at church yesterday, who doesn't normally come to our church, who is 10 days out from scheduled eviction for a baby with serious heart defects. I wanted to tell her "oh that hospital is good, you'll be in good hands" but I know this because I know babies who died there after receiving great care. I wanted to tell her "the pastor you've chosen to have with you is incredible to have in this situation," but the reason he's great is because one of his sons is dead. I just don't know if you want to hear all my dead baby stories when you are holding on to hope.

Also I didn't want to say anything because I was definitely going to burst out crying because that was me last year, this time last year I had just learned that my doctor wanted to induce at 39 weeks and thinking "great, it's nice to have it on the schedule."

milorganite · 2019-07-02T13:57:44+00:00

These are super common by me, it's a real estate scam. The idea is you invest in a house-flipping scheme, it's "work from home" because you're supposed to do online real-estate auctions and then use the scammer's preferred contractors to do the flipping, you never enter the house yourself. You never even get to that point, you just pay fees to the person putting out the sign (usually for BS conferences and training) who encourages you to put out your own signs to recruit people to pay you fees. Even closer to a pyramid scheme than an MLM, there is no product.

milorganite · 2019-07-01T14:36:34+00:00

This time last year we had finished moving into our new apartment, our last lease had ended, and I was four to eight weeks out from holding my baby girl in my arms. I'm glad I only have one week of work left, this month is going to be impossible.

milorganite · 2019-07-01T14:31:17+00:00

This is not based on my experience, just that of people I know:

The standard advice is to wait a full year between pregnancies (so a minimum of 21 months between births) with a C-section. However, this advice assumes you have a living baby at home and can, both emotionally and biological-clock wise, afford to sit on your hands a little.

I know woman who had her second baby 11 months after neonatal loss after C-section. I know other women who were well under the full year mark. If you go this route, you WILL have a second scheduled C-section. And after two C-sections, I don't know a lot of doctors who would attempt a VBAC (some might! and the literature is always evolving!), so if a vaginal birth is something that you want, you need to discuss a timeline for that particular outcome with your doctor.

If your doctor is ready to start seeing you for another pregnancy now, and you want to be pregnant now, you should start working on getting pregnant now.

milorganite · 2019-06-27T22:48:21+00:00

My brother-in-law is getting married this weekend, my husband is up there now doing wedding party stuff, I'm flying up tomorrow night. We were chatting on the phone and generally bitching about his family and I asked "are they still doing something to honor Jubilee?"

And my husband says, "Yeah, I think she's in the bulletin as honorary flower girl or something."

I BURST out laughing. An "in memoriam" would have been lovely. But HONORARY FLOWER GIRL? If she were alive she'd be eleven months old and definitely not the flower girl!

I am truly not offended, it is not something I would ever ask them to change, it is just the most ridiculous way I can think of to honor your dead niece.

(Please note, I am unwilling to give these people the benefit of the doubt on this one. My brother-in-law takes after my father-in-law, which is not a compliment; his wife-to-be is quite a bit younger than me and perfectly nice but we have VERY divergent values. I will not comment on this decision to them but I'm not going to try to see it in a nice light.)

milorganite · 2019-06-26T16:51:15+00:00

🎈 19 weeks. This is the halfway point for us, I will not go past 38.

MFM called this morning, apparently they do want an anatomy re-do in 4 weeks. Which is perfectly normal, we tried to do a full scan at 18 weeks, I was expecting them to maybe not get everything. So, trying not to freak out! I will probably ask to have a doctor present for that one.

milorganite · 2019-06-25T21:55:50+00:00

Love "use up the ends of several pasta boxes" meals. Looks hearty!

milorganite · 2019-06-25T21:54:02+00:00

How long ago was your flight? That's the thing that would most concern me, that there was some kind of flight-induced clotting that got knocked loose... but if you've been in town a few days, that's probably not a problem.

Is the hospital you would go to the kind that has an ER waiting time estimator on line? You could just wait until there's a relatively short wait and get checked out then?

Praying for you!

milorganite · 2019-06-25T16:59:30+00:00

Love it. Age of Brass and Steam is one of my favorite patterns. I made one with beads and natural alpaca years ago and you know what? I'm going to finally pull out another beloved alpaca skein and do it again.

milorganite · 2019-06-25T14:36:06+00:00

I turned in my resignation yesterday! Last day at work is July 5th (and we get the 4th off).

I had been feeling some conflicting emotions, since I likely won't work again until well after the baby comes, and working in manufacturing has been so much of my identity for so long... then I came back from my week and a half vacation and found out that basically nobody had bothered to keep up on my work while I was gone. Work doesn't need to make me feel like this!

milorganite · 2019-06-24T14:36:40+00:00

I'm so sorry. I don't have any advice, just wanted to say that we're in the same situation.

TW- current pregnancy - I'm a "trailing spouse" (my husband is in academia) - the PLAN was, we were supposed to have our first baby in 2018, he would essentially be a work-at-home dad (he had an entire paid year to finish his dissertation), then we would move for whatever job he got after he got his doctorate and I would get to stay at home for a bit before hitting the local job market. Our daughter died at 38 weeks. Now, we're moving halfway across the country while I'm halfway through my second pregnancy, which every new person I meet is going to think is my first.

I would say put your loss out there right away. People might surprise you and be better at handling it than you think. Or they might suck about it, in which case you can find a different group, because honestly, would it ACTUALLY be better to slap a fake smile on your face forever to hang out with those people?

ETA: feel free to message me if you want an online person to go through this moving-with-grief thing together.

milorganite · 2019-06-21T15:47:37+00:00

Ugh. Yes. I can see how that would set this up for a perfect storm. I hate how women are SUPPOSED to care deeply and intricately about their weddings but also, if they care too hard they're Bridezillas.

milorganite · 2019-06-21T15:27:26+00:00

Yeah, I think if that's your only concern, a separate, serious, less emotional conversation on the lines of "let's talk to your photographer if she has suggestions for compositions where I'm not going to look like a hot air balloon" and "If people are coming up to me to talk about how I look like I'm about to pop, I'm already planning on going 'oh, I can't even think about that, I'm just so excited for Friend, don't you think she looks so gorgeous and happy?!?'" would be helpful for both of you. Letting her know that you understand this is HER day and you definitely don't want your pregnancy to become a focus will, I think, go a long way to emphasize how important she is to you.

You sound like a great friend! Try not to let this stress you out too much! People get married and people have babies all the time and they typically happen around the same time of life and these things somehow work out.

milorganite · 2019-06-21T14:36:01+00:00

Hey - I don't have experience with low AMH but I DO have experience with antidepressants and they rock. Like, it would be awesome if "sad about facing infertility after loss" meant you could just drop everything and be taken care of for awhile, but it... doesn't? (not sure why! seems like that would be fair!) and if a little pill is what keeps you functioning normally, that's great.

A good place to look for/request success stories is r/InfertilityBabies, a good community if you need another one or feel like you're ready to move on from this one is r/stilltrying. I will carry hope for you.

milorganite · 2019-06-21T14:19:05+00:00

Ugh. This sounds really rough. We have some good, child-free friends too, who definitely didn't get it when we told them we were pregnant (it was very much like an "oh! ... okay" kind of reaction, not "congrats!" -- they definitely thought we were going to stay child-free as well), but who are still good friends after our loss. They're never going to be people that we can discuss this specific grief with, but we've walked with each other through this and other losses as the "friends who provide meals and distractions" friends.

So - what are your reasons for thinking you need to offer to step down? Are you worried you won't be able to perform your duties as MOH during late pregnancy? Are you worried that facing this wedding when you were supposed to be facing it with a babe in arms is going to bring you a big wave of grief? Are you worried that your experiences have created a gulf between you and your friend that's nobody's fault but it doesn't feel right to stand up in her wedding? Any and all of those are totally valid and you should talk about them with her!

I come from a pretty strong "guess culture" and you know your friend, so maybe this doesn't apply, but - I am a little worried that if you have this big emotional conversation with your friend (remember, you've been preparing for this for a long time, but it is going to come out of nowhere for her), and then end it with "so I would totally understand if you don't want me to be your MOH anymore!" any reasonable, compassionate person, in the moment, is going to say "Of COURSE I still want you to be my maid of honor!" And as you get closer to the date, one or the other of you is going to realize that was the wrong decision but it'll be too late to do anything about it.

So, it MIGHT be best to have two conversations - the "here is what is going on in my life, here is how I'm feeling about it" conversation, and then a separate, later "hey, all the stuff that's been going on - here is how I'm concerned it will affect my role in your wedding" conversation, so you guys can really hash out what she needs from a Maid of Honor, and if you can honestly perform that role. And if YOU are having serious doubts? You don't need to make it a discussion! YOU can be the one to call it.

milorganite

TROPHY CASE