The Duchess

Behaving like a hussy can lead to property loss.

One cold and dreary winter night in my very early twenties I set out with a bunch of girlfriends to get drunkour groove on. We went to a lovely bar on Whyte Avenue and proceeded to drink everything that wasn't nailed down...including other peoples drinks.

Being the loudmouth outgoing one of the group I often would flit about the bar making small talk with everyoneguys. On this particular eve with my vodka goggles working overtime I started chatting up a rather dashing fellow. I bated my eyelashes and mentioned I was from the good old USA (I was in Canada and this was pre 9/11 so the US was still a popular place, plus I was stacked back then and that Lennie Kravitz tune American Woman was popular put all three together and it was free drink city) and was in town on a top secret mission. We were hitting it off and I excused myself to go and let my friends know I had "hooked" a live one and I was sure I was moments away from being asked to dinner/coffee/marriage so I could get my green card and work legally, also I really needed to pee.

As luck would or wouldn't in this case have it I could not find my friends anywhere, I was pissed they ditched me and even more mad that I had no way home and was not about to spend twenty-five bucks on a cab for one. Looking back I really didn't search all that long for them, in fact in my drunken state I probably casually glanced in the general direction I had last seen them on my way to the bathroom, to this day they swear that I left before them and that they watched me go. Whatever.

After the bathroom break I head back to the Dude and mention I am now flying solo so we should probably leave and go make out somewhere. Conveniently he lives just a few blocks away why not just head to his hovel for a nightcap. So I agree and yes I know how stupid this is and wrong but just try and put that aside for a moment. We get to his place and it's all bachelor style and whatnot and we have a drink and we are making out on the couch and it's warm in his house so I take off my FAVORITE sweater (I did have a tank top on underneath) and throw it on the couch. At this point I had determined he was slightly more drunk than I  and also I was not really interested but also I was not yet sober enough to drive home (my car was at the bar 6 blocks away). I figured I could kill another two hours and then be good to go.

As we move from the couch to the bedroom (there was no sex, there was whiskey if you get my drift, but no sex) I notice something on the dresser...handcuffs? Oh shit. What the hell had I gotten myself into? It seemed I was about to be the main character in a Lifetime movie. Then I noticed the gun holster. Fuck. I tried to play cool and told him my head was spinning lets just cuddle (every guy dreams of hearing that) and then I waited him out. He passed out fairly quickly and as soon as I could I wiggled out from underneath his arm and tried to retrieve my sweater which his fat-ass cat was sitting on.

Every time I tried to pull the sweater out the cat would hiss at me. SO I went into the kitchen (then seems dis-jointed to me but I was drinking) and wrote a note saying I had a great time and call me. No name. No number. Then I left, leaving behind my sweater (I still miss that sweater) and a small piece of my dignity. I walked six blocks at five in the morning in a tank-top during winter in Edmonton. I drove home and vowed to become a nun or at least someone who doesn't drink so much that she can't find her friends.

Three weeks later I was pulled over for speeding and guess who the officer was. Officer Dude was pretty cool about the whole thing but he never offered to give me back my sweater. Jerk.

Hopefully she will have Duke's math skills.

Uhh yesterday I wrote that this was a 69 month project and counting. It would appear that I added the number of months we tried to conceive with the number of weeks that I am pregnant. In other words this has been a 42 month project and counting (not even close to 69), but who am I kidding one way or another this part of the adventure is over in a month.

Yay!

What is in a name you ask?

I will never forget the first naive time that I threw away my birth control pills and did the deed. I just knew that this was it, my whole life was going to be different, I was going to get pregnant immediately and while this thought was both exciting and scary I knew I was ready. Well as many of you know that was 134,064,561 cycles ago or July 1st of 2005.

Right away we began talking about names and making plans for our eventual offspring. I realized very quickly that Duke and I have very different ideas when it comes to naming a child. I like names with meaning behind them or a cool story or perhaps a favorite family member. Duke prefers something edgy and in the now but not too edgy, things like Pierce or Rescha (not even sure how to spell it but pronounced Ree-shaw) both perfectly fine names, if you don't live in a very small town where most children have never heard the name Pierce without it being associated with earrings.

Over time, as we have had plenty, we whittled the list down to two sets of names, one for a boy and one for a girl. We held on to these names through all the negatives, through the loss, through the breakdown and the eventual remodel of our marriage. The names were ones we had put thought into, perhaps I am over thinking the whole name thing but to me it is one of the most important first decisions you make as a parent. Your name is most likely with you forever and many people have very strong associations about/with names.

I think we really finalized the names we wanted right before our loss in 2006, when my sister-in-law announced she was pregnant and due the following August and we were all gathered as a family on 4th of July 2007 she was asking what we thought of various names and I made the largest mistake of opening my mouth and saying that the Only name that Duke and I agreed on was Lauren. Lauren Grace to be exact, I went on and on (blame the wine) about how beautiful it flowed with our last name and it was feminine while being strong and how the sound of it just made me happy.

I can't say for sure when or where my sister-in-law decided to name her child but her name is Lauren Elizabeth and she is beautiful, happy and sweet. I could lie and say it didn't hurt but it broke a small piece of my heart. It was one more thing being taken away from me because I didn't win the big baby race, when in fact I couldn't even enter my body in the qualifying event. I cried privately for that loss not wanting the Duke to know how much it bothered me. Not wanting others to think I was a poor sport or so bitter that I couldn't be happy for another person’s fortune. It never occurred to me that Duke may have been upset by this until one night when we were watching TV and he announced that should we have a daughter we would be naming her Ultimate Lauren One or Lauren the First. We laughed and I cried (as a side note several other people in my husband's family called me privately to see how I was feeling about the name) and I just figured that when the time came we would somehow find a name that made us as happy as that one.

I know that we don't know the sex of the baby yet, my hunch however is girl, and I have become rather obsessed with finding an alternative name should it really turn out to be a girl. I didn't realize how much so until I read Carole's post yesterday and was leaving a comment and all of my old anger and bitterness came bubbling to the top. Duke and I discussed it over brunch today and he says what the hell we can name her Lauren if we want to. In fact I believe he said he would dare anyone in his family to say a single word about it.

As with every other decision in my life Internets I am asking you, are two children named Lauren too much for one family? I should say that we do not see his sister often, usually not more than four times a year and in the two years we have lived in Southern Oregon(where her mother and father live) they have never come to our home. So here are my questions:

Has anyone ever used a name they know you love?

Would you still use that name if you are not close with that person?

Do you have any names to throw into our hat (that you will not be using of course...I am slightly sensitive to that)?

Thank you in advance for the assvice, I absolutely love it.

No Words

I have tried for days to write this post and in the end I decided to check my Google reader instead. Emily at Not That You Asked has written a post about their dear friends Brian and Katie who has a beautiful 16 month old daughter who was just diagnosed, operated on and will soon begin a very invasive course of treatment. All of the details are over at Emily's and there is a huge Donate button on the left. There has already been a huge outpouring of support but as we all know there can never be enough love and in the world of medical treatments there can never be enough money. Please, please, please click over and give - whether it be kind words, prayers or monetarily.

It was a very rough week here in the kingdom, on Tuesday night I began bleeding very heavily and bright with small clots. I phoned Doc Wonder and he said if I began filling a pad every hour I was to head straight to the ER and he explained that if I started to pass tissue what I should look for and that I needed to come in first thing in the morning.

I made it through the night and when I went in the next morning we started the ultrasound - first with the screen turned away from me. To say it was tense in the room was an understatement; I don't think any of us were breathing. Doc Wonder's exhalation was actually audible and he swung the screen towards me. There was our baby bouncing around with a heart rate of 189. Moving its arm buds up to its face and kicking its tiny leg buds. I was shocked, the nurse was shocked, and the doc was shocked. He commented that the baby was picking "her"(we switch at each visit) nose to which I replied that was a Duke trait and then he said, "This is one tough kid Duchess, I have to be honest I was very worried."

Yeah, that toughness, she gets that from me.

We could find no source for the bleeding and no current blood flow going where it shouldn't be. Growth is right on track and I was sent home to relax. I am on complete vaginal rest until further notice - which I had already been on since week seven. I am officially 9w0d today and every single day feels like a small victory.

Simply the best

There are really no words to express my gratitude for all of the comments on that last post. I am trying to take a new attitude that I am doing everything I can to have a healthy and successful pregnancy. If something is going to go wrong my body will let me know, once again I am faced with the lesson of letting go of control. To be honest until Melanie commented about her friable cervix I hadn't even thought of that - I bleed after pap smears, IUI, physical exams and sometimes sex. I have had a very friable cervix in the past and I can't believe I didn't draw the line before now. This is exactly why I love comments so much.

With that being said I have written a letter to Doc Wonder about his picture comment. I fully agree again with Melanie and Julia that women whose babies are dying need pictures just as much if not more than ones who are not. If I had a penny for every time I took out the pictures of my ectopic and looked at them and thought about the time that surrounded that loss I could pay for a trip to the moon. In fact it was only right before this last cycle that I removed them from my nightstand and put them in a safer place. I still keep the small plush bear that they gave to me in the hospital on my bed - I look at it and I remember everyday. Without having these small tokens of remembrance I can promise you my grieving process would have been much different and far less complete. I wrote all that and more in my letter and while I have no doubt that he was just trying to put me at ease and meant no harm, for all I know that was a lie he told me, he needs to know that it is important and very necessary.

Of Shadows and Connections

Spacemom had a great post today that got me thinking about my own family. Right before my thirteenth birthday my father passed away (I can't remember if I have written this story before or not so please stick with me if I have) shortly after that someone asked me if I believed in the afterlife, people watching over me and ghosts. My quick initial reply was yes to the first and no to the last two. The thought of my forty-eight year-old father's ghost watching over my thirteen year old activities really freaked me out and the thought of waking up in the middle of the night to his presence sitting at the foot of the bed led me to sleep with the light on for the next three months.

Slowly as I adjusted to life without my father and began to develop my own beliefs in faith, I started to hope that maybe he was watching over me, maybe we are all really connected by something bigger than ourselves (still not on board with seeing ghosts, spirits and what-not, no problem with people who have these "gifts" just not my thing, for some reason the notion totally freaks me out), However, never having had any sort of sign from my father I just continued to grieve in silence and work my way through high school.

During the summer before my junior year of high school I decided that I wanted to have sex with my boyfriend (maybe TMI, but hang in this really is all going somewhere). He being the good Catholic boy that he was needed a bit of convincing that we were not going straight to hell (we were both very inexperienced when we started dating and after a year and a half of making out, I had had enough) I didn't plan my seduction very carefully, we went to dinner and a movie and then back to my house which by some very weird stoke of luck was empty and I jumped him. No less than forty-five seconds after it was over the phone rang; it was near my curfew so I figured it was just my Mom calling to make sure I had made it home. It ended up being my sister who only a week or so before had come home from Nicaragua where she had been on a medical mission for Doctors without Borders. She sounded half asleep and in a much panicked voice she wanted to know what I was doing. I told her I had just gotten home and I was getting ready for bed. "Oh, I just called because I had the most vivid dream that you were having sex and I wanted to know if you have had sex yet or not" Of course I said no, and she seemed appeased and I made the mistake of telling the boyfriend and then he really thought we were going to hell. I did finally tell her the story right before my wedding and she asked if I remembered what I had worn that night and if yes did it include a red sweater, I did remember and it was very pretty mohair deep scarlet sweater - from the gap where I worked at the time, but I digress. I had the very strange feeling of connection with my sister. We have had other instances of things like this since then but none so clear. I finally had proof of connection, creepy as this proof was, I secretly hoped it was possible that my father was watching over my life, maybe not all the parts but checking in occasionally.

Fast forward again to 2001, I had come home from school and September 11th had just happened and I couldn't get my student visa renewed (I went to school in Canada). I was working as a waitress at a place I hated and just making ends meet, I had tons of stupid debt and was quickly becoming panicked at how to pay for all of it and school and the cost to now have all of my courses transferred. I had just reconnected with Duke and I hated that I worked nights and he worked regular hours but I also knew I didn't want to sit at a desk all day. I met a couple who sat in my section one afternoon with their three week old twin girls, how sweet, I mentioned I had been a nanny and they mentioned they were looking for one but there was a catch as they had another set of twins that were just turning two and a seven and nine year old to boot. SIX KIDS!!! Let me not forget the small fact that I would be alone as they both worked full time and were not into the full time parenting (the stories I could tell). I met the kids and took the job and fell in love with that crazy family and they fell in love with me and I got them through the next three-and-a-half years. I digress...again, one day the father's (T.) parents came to visit Portland from Idaho. T's Dad was not his biological father but had adopted him when he was very young. T's Dad came into the kitchen to meet me and stopped dead in his tracks, looked at me and said, "If I didn't know better I would say you are the daughter of a guy I went to school with." I replied that it couldn't be as my father was from Great Britain and then attended high school in Spokane, Washington. "That's where I went to school too! Was his name P.H.?" I almost passed out on the spot. This guy who happened to know my father from a hundred million years ago ends up parenting the guy who gave me a job when I was on the brink of young financial ruin. This job was my lighthouse in a very scary dark time, it gave me financial security and allowed me the opportunity to go to school, have a lovely home and not feel so lost after not being able to return to school. It also taught me volumes on parenting and gave me the knowledge that I really, really wanted to have a crazy family of my own. I have told this story to skeptics who determined it was just a big coincidence and after reading this you may feel the same but to me it will always be my father looking out for me the only way he could.

Are you wondering yet about why the middle bit with my sister might be relevant? It is because she phoned me the other night to tell me of a sequence of dreams she has been having. The cancer has not been responding to treatments and she has been a little down and very tired. She told me that the dreams started with her at a physic who was reading tea leaves and told her that someone close to her was trying to build a family, she told the woman yes, her sister and the woman looked her dead in the face and said sometimes for a soul to enter the earth first one must leave, she woke herself up but the next night she went right back in and was at my baby shower, she said I was huge and happy and shiny and it was such a fresh light moment, it was very peaceful but then the Medium showed up with at the house with a reminder that we can't always have it all. The last dream she had in this series was of me in the hospital starting to push to deliver twins and she was having chest pain (my sister was there when my other sister gave birth and the doctor let her "catch" the baby as she is able to deliver but is not licensed in the US) and then the dream just ended.

Another connection or just crazy dreams brought on by fear and anti-nausea medicine? I hope it is the latter but either way I believe this is another time that my father will step in and help us find our ways.

Just A Thought...

I was laying in bed this morning thinking about vasectomies for some reason (you know as I feel it only fair that whatever person I end up with have one (when the time comes) so I don't have to have another procedure because let's face it I have had enough action down there) and that is when the following thought produced a peal of laughter so loud that I snorted:

Do I get a discount now if I have my tubes tied? Or rather my tube - think about it if it's cheaper to do it that way then I could buy more shoes. I knew there would be a silver lining. I just knew it.