Out of the Darkness

I'm sitting in the dark to write this. It seems to be the only appropriate way to get it out of my head since the last year was so bleak. Bright flecks bracketed the gloom, but what happened between the parentheses has left me scarred. I'm working on turning the lights back on and it's almost bright enough to return to writing my way through my imagination.

The short version: I have a fifteen week old now, my third and final baby. My pregnancy and postpartum were full of complications so I'm still recovering.

The longer version:

I had my first midwife appointment the day after I got a positive test. I had a history of hyperemesis gravidarum so we needed to be proactive with my treatment in case it happened again. It did. By 5.5 weeks I couldn't keep anything down anymore and started taking an anti-nausea medication, Diclegis. It helped at first, but it made me so sleepy that I couldn't drive more than the mile to get Turbokid to and from school. Messy Mouse trashed the house while I dozed on the couch.

By eight weeks I was on the maximum dosage of my medication and was running out of safe foods. I was vomiting between 15 and 30 times a day. I was triggered by the shower, by the color chartreuse, by certain sounds, and by every smell. I could no longer drink water, and wouldn't be able to again for another sixteen weeks. My husband was out of the country for work so I was alone for ten days with a preschooler, a toddler, and an inability to stand up for more than five minutes without vomiting. My kids' whole foods diet became a steady stream of veggie burgers, veggie dogs, bread, fries, carrots, and applesauce.

I forced myself to sew my son's Halloween costume but I was too sick to take him trick-or-treating. My entire body ached from the frequent vomiting and lack of nutrition. We went to a friend's Halloween party and I spent almost the entire hour we stayed in the bathroom. The rosy glow in my cheeks was due to broken capillaries.

At fifteen weeks I hit my critical dehydration point. The midwife couldn't find the baby's heartbeat with the doppler. After a terrifying five minutes of searching, she took me in a different room for an ultrasound. My heart rate was fast and the baby's was slow, so they matched and she couldn't tell them apart with just the doppler. The midwives tried giving me a shot of phenergan. I vomited foamy acid into the sink, became agitated, and the walls started to move. They sent me home after two liters of IV fluids and making sure the baby's heart rate was back up in a less scary range.

Less than 48 hours later, it was Thanksgiving and I was in the ER pleading with my body to just get it over with and let me die. The vomiting was continuous, my pulse and breathing were rapid, my balance was poor, and I was so confused I couldn't figure out how to fill out the forms. I had lost seventeen pounds and it would have been more if I hadn't spent the previous seven weeks on partial bedrest to conserve calories. The IV Zofran the ER gave me made me hallucinate and projectile vomit. It took 2.5L of fluids before I could bring my thoughts into some sort of focus. I was diagnosed with a UTI, given IV antibiotics and a printout of ridiculous "tips" to combat HG, and sent home with a 10 day course of oral antibiotics. It was a fight to keep them down. I lived off a soy pediatric drink for two weeks because my stomach was so irritated from a week of vomiting every 15 minutes that it couldn't handle anything solid.

At the beginning of December I started having headaches like electric shocks to my left temple. They were brief, but frequent and excruciating. My doctor determined they weren't dangerous and were the result of nerve irritation from excessive vomiting. I had electric shock bursts 5-10 times a day for several months before the extreme pain faded to tingling. I still have strange sensations in my temple so I think the nerve is damaged.

Just after Christmas I had my anatomy scan. I chose not to find out the sex of the baby. I wanted to separate the baby from the awful pregnancy and keeping her anonymous until birth was the only way I could think to do that. The baby was healthy.

In early January I started to slowly gain back the weight I lost. My first attempt at weaning of the Diclegis was a disaster that nearly required another IV. I ended up not being able to wean off it until about 28 weeks.

February was my best month, even with the broken toe I sustained from knocking a can off the counter. I can't remember if that happened in January or February because it ended up being an insignificant injury, though it was painful at the time. I was able to go back to the gym, though all I did was walk on the treadmill while the kids went nuts in the child care center.

March was cataclysmic. At the end of February, I caught a respiratory infection. It progressed quickly from congestion to a bronchial cough. I went to urgent care on Monday when I spiked a fever and coughed up pink. I was diagnosed with bacterial bronchitis and started on antibiotics. I started getting better, but then on Friday I coughed up blood and coughed hard enough to feel a pop in my lower left ribs. The doctor thought I'd fractured a rib and the bronchitis was turning into pneumonia so he gave me an antibiotic shot in my hip and a prescription for Tylenol 3. I stopped coughing blood. Sunday night around 10pm I was getting ready for bed and had a coughing fit. My left ribs audibly popped as I tried to catch my breath. I couldn't calm my breathing and was in a lot of pain so my husband called a friend to stay with the sleeping kids and took me to the ER. I was given morphine and a chest x-ray. I went home with stronger painkillers and a printout on rib fractures. My husband was flying out for a work trip at 5am Monday so he called his mother to come help me with the kids.

I woke up very early Tuesday morning with a crackle in my left lung. Every breath caused more pops and more pain. The pain spread down my back and up into the hollow of my collarbone. Every movement was agonizing. I knew something was very wrong and drove myself to the ER. After I had a positive D-dimer, the doctor told me he suspected a blood clot in my lung. Since I was seven months pregnant I had to sign a bunch of consent forms for the recommended CT scan. I was afraid the test could hurt the baby, but I knew a life-threatening pulmonary embolism needed to be ruled out. I had a CT with contrast and ultrasounds on my legs. I didn't have any clots, but my left lung wasn't normal, either. I had pleurisy, pleural effusion, a partially collapsed lung, and torn intercostal muscles, though that last one wasn't diagnosed until a month later. There wasn't anything I could do but take Vicodin and wait out the extreme pain. The Vicodin didn't help.

About two weeks later I was starting to feel a little better and could move around a little, but then I fell in a hole in the yard and sprained my ankle. It was the same ankle I had reconstructed when I was in college and I had nerve damage from the repair so I wasn't sure how badly it was sprained. I was given crutches and referred to an orthopedist, who said my old ankle repair was tight and well done so I escaped with a moderate sprain. Unfortunately, I could only use the crutches for a day. The strain on my ribs was too much and my pain level went back up to an 8-10. If I laid in bed on my bad side and didn't move, I was only at an 8, but moving turned it into a pain worse than my worst kidney stone. Several times when the pain or the lingering HG made me vomit, I ended up stuck on the bathroom floor unable to move.

The month of March was pure torture. As the baby grew, more and more pressure was put on my ribcage. It didn't help that she was persistently breech and liked to jam her head into my injured side. I felt like whatever I used to be died months ago and my mind was nothing but a numb shell. That wasn't the beginning of my depression since I was already having issues with it due to the HG earlier on, but it certainly aggravated it. I was in so much pain that I couldn't function. I couldn't take care of myself, let alone my family. I finally got a referral to the pain clinic after the last non-invasive treatment option, lidocaine patches, did nothing. My appointment was in early April, when I was 34 weeks. The doctor examined me and decided that the pain was most likely neuromuscular. He gave me a series of trigger point injections, which released the spasms in the damaged muscles and finally gave me some relief. I was very sore for a couple days afterward, but soon the pain levels were greatly reduced and I could resume living. I still couldn't do any torso-twisting motions and coughing and sneezing were horrible, but after a month of agony just being able to breathe was wonderful.

My muscles relaxed enough to allow the baby to flip head-down just before 35 weeks. That was definitely a relief because I had about run out of room. I measured behind the last six weeks with my first two babies, but this one was bigger and I was measuring ahead. At 35 weeks I was already bigger than I was when I went into labor with the other two even though my weight gain was much lower. I only gained 10 lbs this time compared to the 40 and 35 I gained with my other babies.

My water broke in the morning on May 8th. I didn't have contractions for a couple hours, but once they started up I knew it was going to go fast. After a 2.5 hour labor, my little warrior Elora Eowyn came into the world with a scream. She was born with her right arm next to her head and a true knot in her cord. I had hoped for another waterbirth like I had with Messy Mouse, but since I went from 7 cm to baby out in under 5 minutes with a series of involuntary pushes there was no time to get into the tub.

Our pain journey wasn't quite over yet. I aggravated my torn intercostal muscles from moving around during labor and injured my tailbone during the rapid birth. Elora's face was bruised and her eyes were red with broken capillaries. She screamed whenever she was moved. On day four she was hospitalized overnight for jaundice and we found out the screaming was because her right collarbone had snapped in half on her way into the world. It took about six weeks to heal, and during that time we had to dress her only in front-fastening clothes and swaddle her arm to her chest.

Elora is wonderful now and I love everything about her. She's chubby, smiley, and cooing. I'm still fighting my way out of the darkness, though. All of the physical trauma I went through triggered postpartum depression and anxiety. I've been on antidepressants and going to support groups for two months now, and those have been a great help. I no longer feel so overwhelmed and disconnected from myself and the world. The derealization I had for a while was terrifying, especially when I started feeling lost in my own neighborhood or having panic attacks at the grocery store. I'm coming up on month six of rib pain with no end in sight, but now it usually only bothers me when I move the wrong way or do too much physical activity. I tried a restorative yoga class last weekend but it was still too painful. The tailbone still aches sometimes, but hasn't bothered me much in a month or so.

I'm working on feeling like myself again, both mentally and physically. Progress is slow, but it's still progress. My muscles are starting to feel a little less gelatinous and my mind is leaving surrealism behind. For a while I struggled to write a single coherent sentence, but now my stories are starting to come out of hiding. I'm heading toward rereading what I have already written on Sand Into Glass so I can finish writing the last act of it, but I'm not quite there yet. It's coming back, it will come back, I will come back. It is taking some time to find myself again, but the fight is no longer as daunting as it was a couple months ago. I just need to be patient with myself through the endless days as I battle out of the abyss and back into the light.

A Little Lie Won't Hurt

I am meeting with a state representative on Saturday to discuss Kansas H.B. 2598. Right now, I am going to focus on a specific aspect of the bill, an aspect that has already passed in Oklahoma. This bill has far-reaching implications that have nothing to do with abortion. It is potentially family-destroying and will lead to an increase in suffering. There are plenty of disorders that when diagnosed in utero can be treated immediately after birth, but there are also disorders which are invariably fatal.

When doctors are allowed to lie to their patients, not only is trust broken, but families are shattered. The doctor uses his or her faith as an excuse to violate his patients’ trust. The following scenario could become common if doctors are allowed to lie when they think a family might terminate. It may be difficult to read. I know it was difficult to write. No one wants to consider the possibility that something could be wrong with the baby, but unfortunately it does happen. Most families are lucky enough to have healthy babies, but you never know when nature will give you something different than you expected.

* * *

Imagine for a moment that you are a young man living in a state where doctors are allowed to lie to their patients because of their own religious convictions. You get married and decide to have a baby. Maybe it happens right away, and maybe it takes a while, but as soon as you see that little line on the test, you are in love.

You go with your wife to her prenatal appointments, hear the heartbeat at ten weeks, watch her belly begin to round out as she tells you she feels the first little kicks. At twenty weeks, you go with her to the big ultrasound. The doctor tells you the baby is healthy, but was too shy to reveal his or her sex. You are disappointed with not knowing, but at the same time, the surprise is exciting.

You and your wife pick out names. You paint the walls and decorate the nursery, maybe as a birthday surprise for your wife. You have a baby shower, and everyone is excited. Maybe this is the first grandchild on both sides of the family, and you are overwhelmed with baby gifts. You begin thinking about college savings plans, vacations you can take with your child, and wonder what he or she will look like. You can’t wait to meet your baby.

Full term comes and one morning your wife wakes you up to tell you she thinks she’s in labor. When you get to the hospital, you can’t help but notice your doctor appears nervous. You brush the thought of it aside and excitedly support your wife through her labor. You call your family, and they wait for the official announcement. She pushes and the baby is born.

It is a boy! But, something is wrong. He does not cry. He does not breathe. His heart still beats, and he struggles to breathe, but he never will. His lungs never developed because lung maturation requires amniotic fluid, and a baby can’t make amniotic fluid without kidneys.

Your son has Potter’s syndrome. The doctor knew it from that twenty week ultrasound, and did not tell you because he thought you might decide to terminate if you knew. Your family spent forty weeks preparing to bring home a healthy baby, and now you won’t be bringing home a baby at all.

You are devastated. Your wife cries convulsively as the medical staff futilely tries to get the baby to breathe. He is fading and the nurses still keep trying to save him. Finally, the doctor tells them to stop and let your wife hold the baby while he dies. This condition is incompatible with life, he says. You struggle to comprehend what that means.

Your son looks perfect, but he dies in your arms, having never taken a breath. You hear the cries of healthy newborn babies through the walls and see happy families in the hallways. You were supposed to be the happy family with a crying newborn, but instead, your room is silent

You take your wife home to an empty nursery. Her breasts fill with milk, but there is no child to feed. They are engorged and painful, but not as painful as her loss. You are numb as you make final arrangements for the child you wanted and planned for. You call the doctor’s office to get a prescription to ease your wife’s postpartum depression and grief, but they are avoidant and take two weeks to fill a single prescription. The doctor never apologizes for leaving you in the dark. You know he knew. “Potter’s Syndrome” was written onto your wife’s chart at twenty weeks.

You bury your child, the son you were so hopeful for, who you wanted to take fishing and to baseball games. Your family weeps in front of a tiny casket. They had great hopes for him, as well. Grandparents wanted to spoil him. Aunts wanted to snuggle him. Cousins mourn the loss of a playmate. You can’t contain yourself and weep over the casket, which is little bigger than a shoe box. He was to be your future, but he is gone and you are having trouble coming to terms with it.

His death shatters your relationship with your wife. You can no longer look at each other without seeing the baby. You are afraid of having another baby because what if it happens again? What if the doctor tells you everything is going to be all right, when something is horribly wrong? You go to marriage counseling, but the counselor can’t offer you anything beyond, “It was God’s will”, and that isn’t good enough. Your wife blames herself, you blame God, the doctor never apologizes for the lie, and nothing can ever replace the child you lost.

You can’t stand to look at the empty nursery. Your wife can’t either, and she says she can’t stand to look at you anymore. She moves in with her parents and a lawyer arrives with divorce papers. Your marriage is over. You are another statistic, another marriage that could not survive the death of a child.

You move on, but you can’t forget. You cannot bring yourself to trust another doctor, no matter their specialty. What is that doctor not telling you? What if he says you’re fine, but you really aren’t? You avoid them and skip your yearly physicals. If you can’t trust one doctor, you can’t trust any. You develop a dull pain in your abdomen, but still stay home. Finally, the pain escalates and you can’t take it anymore. You go to the ER and find out you have end-stage colon cancer. The doctor tells you to trust in God and pray. You call your ex-wife and tell her good-bye. She sobs into the receiver. She and her new husband bring you flowers, but she still can’t look you in the eye. You still love her. You close your eyes and your last thought is of your son.

* * *

Now, let’s go back to near the beginning and see your world from a different perspective. You go to the twenty week ultrasound with your wife. The doctor calls you into his office and tells you something is wrong. You are told your much-wanted baby has no kidneys and will die soon after birth. You get a second opinion, and the baby is given the same prognosis.

You are devastated. After much soul-searching, research, and discussion, you and your wife decide to carry to term. You go through the stages of grief before the baby is even born. He is still alive, and you decide to celebrate his life, however short it may be.

Your wife decides to be induced so the family can meet the baby while he is alive. You set a date, go over your birth plan with the doctor, and call a photographer from an organization such as Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. You are nervous and cry over the little kicks and the motions of the baby felt through your wife’s skin. You talk to the baby, sing to him, tell him you love him. You know you won’t have much time.

A sense of peace washes over you on induction day. The delivery room is quiet as the baby is born. The staff and doctors are gentle and they respect your time. The baby is carefully placed on your wife’s chest and she smiles and strokes his head. Her tears fall onto his hair. You take note of him, memorizing every hair, every beautiful finger and toe. You never want to forget. The photographer and the rest of the family come in to meet the baby. They hold him and kiss him. He only lives for an hour and fifteen minutes, but in that short time, all he knows is love and comfort.

It is a sorrowful day, but also a peaceful one. You knew it was coming and you were able to come to terms with it. There is no empty nursery to come home to, no freshly laundered, neatly folded clothes. The funeral arrangements are already made. That hour and fifteen minutes were not full of chaos and fear, because you knew your time was limited and were able to make the most of it.

At the funeral, you celebrate your son’s brief life. The photographer’s pictures were beautiful and you cry over the slide show. You bury your son in a special outfit you picked out beforehand. No one should have to bury a child, and it is never easy, but it is far more peaceful when you know it is coming. Your wife started on antidepressants early. She does not mind looking at you because it brings back memories of your short, yet beautiful time with your son.

A year later, you decide to try again. At the twenty week ultrasound, the doctor tells you the baby is healthy and you are able to believe him. No trust has been broken. You plan for your new baby. Your daughter is born healthy and screaming. When she is older, you tell her about her older brother and show her the pictures. You don’t think anything of going to your doctor when the dull pain starts in your abdomen. You have no reason not to trust him to do the right thing. Your cancer is diagnosed early, treated, and years later, you dance with your daughter at her wedding.

* * *

Because we have ultrasounds (and there would be an uproar if they were taken away), we have the ability to diagnose disorders and defects prenatally. It is unethical for a doctor to withhold vital information from new parents, information that could help them prepare for potential stillbirth, neonatal death, or major surgeries. We can’t take back this technology and pretend it doesn’t exist. It is here, and it has forever changed the way we approach pregnancy and birth. We need to accept that, and be grateful that it can help prepare parents for tragic situations. Trust is so vital in our relationships with our doctors and other professionals, and for doctors to intentionally violate our trust without repercussion is unforgivable.  It is unconscionable to choose to increase a family's suffering when you could have helped ease them into a horrible situation.

This scenario takes into account just one aspect of H.B. 2598, but I believe this alone is reason enough to reconsider the legislation sweeping many states right now. I wrote it from the father’s perspective because most of these legislators are male. I know it was not easy to read, but a little empathy is vital right now.

Lyra's Water Birth

I wrote Lyra's birth story a week after I had her. I'm just now getting around to posting it up here. This is a direct copy-and-paste from my post on a natural birth forum.

Lyra was my second unmedicated birth. My first was in a hospital and I felt like I was constantly fighting off offers of drugs and interventions even though everything was going great my labor was relatively short -- sixteen hours from water breaking to birth, ten of those hours in active labor. With my second pregnancy, I started out at the same OB practice I had my son with, but switched at 21 weeks when our insurance changed to one that was in-network for the new free-standing birth center opening nearby. I transferred to the midwives and my anxiety about having another hospital birth immediately disappeared. The birth center officially opened in September and the day after Thanksgiving I hit 37 weeks and was cleared to give birth there.

I woke up at 4 am on December 8th with contractions. They felt like intestinal cramps, so I just laid back down and tried to sleep. I'd been having GI issues for two weeks and was having prodromal labor on and off for the last six days, so I figured it was one of those causing my discomfort. An hour later, the contractions were still keeping me awake. I got up to use the bathroom znd wiped away my mucus plug. I started leaking fluid about 5:30. It came in intermittent trickles, but was slightly pink-tinted so I knew my water had broken. I was having a lot of back pain already so I took a shower and waited for my husband to wake up. When the alarm went off at 6, I told him, "I think you're getting a Get Out of Work Free card today."

We hung out downstairs for a little while and made sure we had everything we needed for the birth. Unlike last time, I was GBS- so we didn't have to worry about rushing to get antibiotics. My husband put together a birth announcement template and I woke up my mom, who was staying with us to help with our two year old son, and told her what was going on. At about 7:30 we drove do my husband's office so he could pick up some things and be closer to the birth center. We called the midwife on call at 8:30. She had just gotten home from attending another birth the night before, so we arranged to meet her at the birth center in an hour. We had an hour to kill, so we wandered around Whole Foods and picked up some food to get us through the day. I was having contractions strong enough to make me stop walking and lean over the shopping cart. We got out the contraction timer on the phone and timed them at 1 minute long and 3-5 minutes apart.

We went to the birth center at 9:30 and got checked in after the test strip confirmed I was leaking amniotic fluid. I was having fairly strong contractions with a lot of back pain already so agreed to a dilation check to find out where we were starting from. At 10:30 am I was still only 2-3cm dilated, but my midwife commented on the stretchiness of my cervix. We decided to put our coats on and go for a walk outside. The birth center is in a heavily wooded corporate park and it was about 40 degrees outside, so it was a nice place to walk. Partway through our walk, I had to grab my husband's arm and just sway back and forth as a multi-peak contraction hit me and hung on for several minutes. By the time we got back to the birth center 20 minutes later, I was having contractions I had to focus to breathe through and was in pretty obvious active labor.

I accepted the pain as progress and let my body tell me what positions and movements were best. Lyra was posterior so I spent some time on my hands and knees with my husband holding a phone playing music at the base of my spine. This worked and she flipped to face the right direction, but she flipped back to posterior at some point later and stayed that way. I was standing and using the windowsill for support for most of the labor so I could move through the contractions and let my body take over. I also sat on a birthing balland did hip spirals and bounced and got on my knees and leaned over the ball so I could rock. I tried to lay on my side to rest for a few minutes and that triggered a lovely tetanic contraction. I had to get on my hands and knees while still on the bed as it started and then went into the bathroom to see if emptying my bladder helped, but it continued for about six minutes. I jumped almost immediately into transition and every contraction was significantly stronger than the last. I was becoming really noisy, but concentrated on keeping my jaw open and kept my moans and grunts low-pitched.

I finally got in the tub as the contractions continued to intensify. The fatigue in my legs lifted almost immediately and I let the water support my weight. I got myself into an odd lunge position and stayed there. I was feeling a huge release of fluid and bloody show during each contraction. My midwife did one last cervical check (I only had 3 the entire time). I was at a 9 and Lyra was still high up. All of a sudden, I started involuntarily pushing. I couldn't control the rapid-fire pushes in quick series, like a jackhammer. It wasn't an urge to push, more like hiccups or muscle tics that I couldn't do anything about. It was terrifying but I couldn't fight it. I felt an extreme amount of pressure and thought I was going to the bathroom. I jumped onto my knees without leaving the water and reached down to feel her crowning.

My husband and the nurse helped me to sit back so my feet were in front of me and I felt intense burning as her head crowned and emerged face-up and my body continued to push on its own. I managed to take control just enough to slow down the rest of her coming out while the midwife helped ease out her shoulders because her hand was by her face and we didn't want to hurt her shoulder or collarbone. I helped catch her, but I was in a state of shock after the involuntary pushing, so I needed some help to bring her to the surface. Lyra was on my chest four minutes after that last dilation check. It was 4:23pm. Lyra was alert and looking around, but it took her almost four minutes to start taking good breaths, which wasn't a huge problem since her cord wasn't cut. My midwife said she was probably shell-shocked from coming out so fast so needed a few minutes to get oriented. The pain was gone and I suddenly felt really good, though a bit shaky.

We hung out in the water for a little while while the cord stopped pulsating. My husband cut the cord and took off his shirt so he could hold her skin-to-skin while I was helped out of the water. We laid on the bed with Lyra on my chest so I could deliver the placenta. My damage from the rapid delivery and nuchal hand was surprisingly light... three first-degree periurethral and labial tears, but none on the perineum, although that was already showing bruising. Lyra's face was a little swollen and bruised, but not too bad, and it was fine after a couple days. The midwife stitched up two of the tears while Lyra nursed, something it turns out she was very good at from the first latch and has needed almost no adjustment since (she was already back to her birth weight at 5 days old). We did skin-to-skin on my chest for about four hours before any weighing or measuring were done, and my mom and son visited during that time. Lyra ended up being 6lb 4oz and 18.5 inches, just an ounce smaller than her brother was and the same length.

We came home at 10:30pm. We had the option to stay overnight, but I was feeling pretty good and we wanted to sleep in our own bed. I had the shakes on and off for about twelve hours after the birth from the endorphins and adrenaline, and couldn't sleep until about 5 am.

This labor from beginning to end was far more intense than my first one and a bit shorter (12 hours vs. 16 hours from first sign, <6 hours of active labor vs. 10 hours, and fetal ejection reflex vs. 20 minutes of controlled pushing). I just let go of any fears and doubts and went with the pain, allowing my body to dictate positions and movement. I don't know how much being in the tub actually helped, since I was only in it about an hour and during that time my body went insane. It took me a while to process what happened at the end, but it helped to find a name and reason for it -- fetal ejection reflex. My labor was mostly undisturbed and the midwife and nurse were hands-off and quiet except for occasional heart rate checks with the doppler and when I asked them for something. I felt safe and instinctual, unburdened by the presence of people I didn't know and trust and unrestricted in movement. I probably would have had a lot more damage from birthing a posterior, compound presentation baby if I hadn't been allowed to labor and birth her as my body instructed me. It still is an awesome feeling knowing I could trust my body to do exactly what it needed to.

Time Warp

So... it's been a bit too long.  Mommy brain took over and this blog fell neglected.  It was all worth it, though.  On December 8, I gave birth to an awesome and beautiful little girl named Lyra.  She weighed 6lb 4oz and came flying into the world by way of a water-filled tub in a beautiful new birth center.  She was sunny-side-up, had her hand at her face, and graced me with a mere 6 hours of active labor.  She's already helped me donate a gallon of milk to a needy baby and there will be plenty more to add to that gallon.  In more masculine news, my son has grown into a rambunctious two-year-old and is really putting a new spin on "terrible twos".

I haven't been able to focus enough to get back into writing yet, but I did decide against conventional publishing this morning and I'm now on Amazon.  Everything is going digital these days and I wasn't really up for waiting months or years on rejections from publishers and agents, so I just reformatted them and made them available for Kindle.  And why not?  I didn't write them for money, I wrote them because I was inspired.

My E-Books! (if all four of them aren't up yet, they should be soon.)
So, here I am.  Here are my verbose babies, set loose into a world that probably doesn't care.  But that wasn't the point.  No point letting them hang around on my laptop anymore when there are new ideas echoing around in my head.

Zombie Mom Returns

I didn't realize I hadn't posted in over a month until just now.  My mind is gone lately, and I drift through my days doing little but chasing a toddler (who today is engaging in a new sport called "run-by vomiting" thanks to a stomach bug) and trying not to vomit myself.  My thoughts are hazy and unfocused... quite inconvenient when I am somewhere in the vicinity of 2/3 of the way finished with my 6th book and I can't think long enough to write a coherent paragraph on the screen.

Funny, same thing happened to me two years ago.  I had just finished the handwritten first draft of Mayfly Requiem and was starting the transcription when hyperemesis gravidarum and extreme fatigue slammed me into a wall.  Absolution is being derailed the same way, except this time I thankfully don't have HG.  I want nothing more than to finish this nasty little beast, which I started two and a half years ago and stopped for a while to write Mayfly.  I'm hoping the fog lifts in the next couple of weeks and I can reclaim my brain.  Might be too much to ask, but since I'm not pining away in a lab anymore for seven days a week, maybe I can have just a little bit of energy.  Maybe I can work on the multi-perspective, sometimes stream-of-consciousness, intertwined reality and dream land when we go on our toddler-less vacation in July, but I'm doubting it.

Little Spark has claimed my focus and consciousness, and I may have to wait until December to get them back.