Two a.m. and I am wide-awake

It is one of those nights. It was all I could do to stay awake until 10:00 when I surrendered and went to bed. So what am I doing wide-awake? I’m too tired to attempt a coherent narrative so here is a bullet update of my life since I last posted.

• Nurse Joy kissed me. I didn’t see it coming or I would have ducked. Or run. It happened after my second ultrasound last Friday. The scan went well. We saw four limbs (pods, really), a strong heartbeat, and a residual tail (which made me wonder if I am bearing a tadpole). Dr. Negative had a medical student come and meet us and told her, “Here is why we don’t say 0% chance of conceiving to high FSH women.” I had to be a smart-ass and say, “No, they give us so much hope with that less than 1% forecast.” Dr. Negative said I should stay on the progesterone for another week and released me to my OB. Ultrasound in hand, I went to the window to pay for the visit and Nurse Joy came running up and planted one on my cheek. BLECK!

• My toddler may have a split personality. One day, she is all sunshine; smiling, laughing, affectionate, trying all her baby signs, fun. The next, she is stormy weather; whining, crying, screaming, not even attempting to communicate, anti-fun. We are sharing the sitters with another family three days a week. Their little girl EJ is six months old and is a good baby. My E seems at times to be thrilled with the baby, cooing at her, smiling and patting her back “gently.” Other times, she seems insanely jealous. Last week she had a tantrum. Yesterday she chomped on the sitter’s leg as the sitter attended to the baby. Sitter wants detailed instructions on how to handle this, but to be honest, I have no idea what to tell her. Obviously, I want to discourage this behavior, but I’m not entirely certain of what to do.

• I can’t get rid of this book contract. I told my publisher about the pregnancy hoping they might drop me, but they are making accommodations and being nicer than usual. I guess the only solution is to buckle down and get the whole thing written pronto because I do not want this hanging over my head after the baby comes. I will never do another text. Too boring. Too tedious.

•J finally got a CPAP machine. He has sleep apnea and we hadn’t slept in the same room in about a year. I just couldn’t sleep through that anymore and he could sleep through my kicking him, poking him and complaining. But now he has the machine and it is wonderful. He looks like the elephant man getting geared up, but there is virtually no noise. We are back in the same room, which is an adjustment. Normally, if I were up in middle of the night I would read in bed, but it seems impolite to turn on the lights when he is sleeping soundly. Also, I think we need a larger bed. We both learned to take up more space while sleeping apart so we are having some small skirmishes over whose half of the bed we are on.

• We roadtripped and told our families about the pregnancy this weekend. We told J’s family at breakfast by adding ultrasound photos to E’s little scrapbook. She pulled the scrapbook out of her pack and we told her to show her grandparents her pictures. When she got to the last page we said, “And E is going to be a big sister.” We told my family at my nephew’s 5th birthday dinner. We made a gift certificate that said, “The bearer of this certificate is entitled to one cousin redeemable on or about August 22, 2006.” We brought the house down.

• I am trying to work on my worry. I am still constantly stressed about the what ifs of early pregnancy, but I’m trying to focus on the good news and stay positive. I should get a BabyBeat heart monitor in the mail tomorrow. I’ll try to remind myself that nine weeks may be too early to find a heartbeat with it, but I know we’ll try.

• My classes are going well. I have one bozo in my social issues class who believes we should invade North Korea and “take care of things.” He also thinks the homeless guy who was beaten to death in Florida deserved it because he was bugging people by panhandling. Fortunately, the other students seem like a good bunch. My two quantitative practicum sections are off to a good start.

Night!