Health

40 Days of Writing, Day 13: Getting Back in the Saddle

Published on by Lisa

One cold, one upper respiratory infection and two incidents of thrown out backs later, I find myself at the gym. Specifically, I’m back in zumba class and the mad dash to work out now that spring is here is nothing short of eye popping annoying.  The zumba class comfortably accommodates 45.  It can squeeze 50 -60.  Today, there were nearly 80 people in the room.  80!

The woman next to me hit me twice during our dance moves.  You can’t really get into the hot groove of swinging your tush when there’s another person’s hip in your back.

My back is cracking and popping like popcorn.  Every move sounds like some kind of release and while it feels wonderful, it is equally frustrating to start at the beginning of getting fit.  Lying on my back with limited mobility for nearly 3 weeks atrophied my muscles and took any kind of endurance out of my lungs.  My jeans are a little snug and working out, as expected, for the first time felt slow and measured.  Before my injuries, I was lifting and running, dancing on my off days and feeling fantastic.  My mood was elevated and workouts, even in the most intense intervals, felt like a wonderful burning sensation.  Afterward, I felt renewed and energized.

Now?  After today’s workout I was hobbling to my car and rested in the driver’s seat until I realized someone was patiently waiting for my parking spot.

As one gets older, the spring break fitness routines and alcohol binges seem somewhat ridiculous.  Just like working out solely to be thin seems.  I work out now to relieve stress, to feel normal, to release some inner pressure that can only be released with physical exertion and sweat.  I work out to feel that lovely swing of my ponytail and to feel the blood pumping in my limbs, feeding the muscles’ work.  I love leaning over the water fountain and that terrible gym water taste like heaven on my dry tongue.

Today, though, it was one long marathon of a workout.  An hour and fifteen minutes of, “Oh.  My.  God.  Please.  Help.  Me.  I am going to DIE.”

But, that’s what you do to get back in the saddle.  Pain first.  Then pleasure. Then euphoria.

I want to have that euphoria again.

Gendered Pain: A Free Write on Birth, Partnership and the Woman’s Body

Published on by Lisa

There’s nothing sexy about pain.  There’s nothing even remotely redeeming, glorified, cute, or remarkable about pain.

I came into this realization quite quickly Sunday morning when I was dressing Isaiah for mass. I began lowering him to the floor, felt a horribly familiar pop! in my lower back and I immediately recognized that telling radiating heat that spread throughout my lumbar region as I fell on one knee. Isaiah screamed in my ear as he harmlessly wobbled back from me so he peer into my face to see what was wrong.  All he could see was my face going paler by the second and my breath quicken in short spurts and outbursts, trying to control the pain.

No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.

Not again.  Not again.  Not again.  NOT AGAIN.

I just got back to the gym this week.  I just started getting back on the treadmill, back in the zumba studio, back for my first swim in the pool.  I just …

I just got over my back injury from last month.

Remembering my phone was in the inner pocket of my purse, I slowly walked to my purse on the ground and gently leaned forward.  I reached and immediately fell and screamed in pain.

I somehow got my phone, I don’t remember how.  (A friend told me that when her back went out, she blacked out from the pain.)  I remember feeling calmed by the smooth surface of my phone, thanking God it was charged and relieved that Nick was only 5 minutes into his day, ahead of me, and on his way to work.  I whispered frantically to Isaiah that everything was fine and threw him a toy as I winced in pain.  He hobbled away, whimpering at the site of his mother in such disarray and distraction.

I burst into tears and could barely get the words out to Nick, “My back…w-w-went ou-ou-out a-a-a-gain…”

It was at that moment that I retreated from the world, the pain was overwhelming, almost blinding.

A co-worker told me later she saw Nick walking on the street when he was talking to me, all dressed up for work, briefcase in hand, but in an unusual walking speed, “a near run” she told me.  So she stopped and offered him a ride to wherever he was rushing to.  “Home,” he said, “Leese threw her back out again.”

It’s hormones, my chiropractor told me yesterday.  All the hormones and chemicals that loosen the pelvis and back, readying the body to deliver a baby, are still in your body and, likely, the lumbar region isn’t as tight as it was before and isn’t as strong.  Doing household chores and lifting things can sprain, strain, and injure the lower back, says the doc.

All of this from hormones?  Still?  It’s been 14 months.

Hormones and chemicals can linger in your body, doc says.

A number of friends – all who have given birth in the past two years – have confided of their recent and surprising chronic lower back pain, some so severe that it prevents mobility.  Few have found comfort.  All have tried natural healing, gym trainers, chiropractors, physical therapists. This strange community of back pain mothers comforts me.

I toss two pills of Alleve in my mouth and tried to smile at Isaiah in the kitchen.  He put his chubby arms up for me to carry him and starts grabbing my clothes for leverage, like trying to climb a tree.  Nick immediately scooped him up and tries to cheer him up with a jolly, overly boisterous voice.  The shriek out of Isaiah’s mouth was one I could interpret instantly, “What’s the matter with you?  Why won’t you pick me up?”  He’s taken away from me and, out of nowhere, I have an image of him being taken away from me the moment he was born when all I wanted to do was hold him.  I shake my head, and gently stir the boiling orzo.

Is this what birthing mothers deal with, I asked my head as I stare at the back of Nick’s body.  His is so strong, so solid.  Simply clad in jeans and a white tshirt, Nick’s body looked beautiful to me; his wide and capable back seemed fearless.  His stride was fluid, like a complicated piece of piano music keyed effortlessly.  I look down at my body.  A staccato mess of surgeries, stretch marks, and my skin’s opinion of the pregnancy weight gain and loss.   I see my scarred belly from three surgeries with another scheduled in the summer to fix an umbilical hernia.  My inner eye sees an exhausted and red lumbar region, a weakened lower back throbbing with stubborn stiffness.  It strikes me, with almost a pin needle acuteness, that Nick’s body hadn’t changed at all since we had Isaiah.  Nick’s body remained intact, with no incisions, no stretches, no torn anything.

I pause in that realization.

His tongue had never mistaken water for metallic liquid.  His nose never became so sensitive as to be able to detect the cleaning fluid on the floor of a grocer.  His heart ventricles never widened to allow more blood flow.  His calves and feet never swelled with unbearable water retention.  His chest never billowed with heart burn.  His mind never clouded with postpartum depression.  His nipples never cracked with pain so deep that his shoulders shuddered.  His skin never broke out in rashes.  He never vomited from anesthesia or used his foreman to protect a 6 inch abdominal incision against a winter chill.  He never had a catheter put in at the same time as a suppository while compressors pumped blood away from his legs.  He never had an abrasion in the back of his eye because the surgeons forgot to completely close and protect his eyes before surgery.  He never had to take pills to stop, prompt, or control a menstrual cycle.  He never felt a flutter of life in his belly or feel the hiccup of a new being inside his womb.

Because he doesn’t have a womb.

Nick did and does everything a parent could possibly do.  He transformed his emotions, his life, his commitments, and reformed his schedule to accommodate me and every little thing I needed throughout my pregnancy and birthing experience.  He respects anything I tell him or request.  Nick continuously and gladly lays in a metaphorical railroad track for me and our son.  If that’s what needs to happen, that’s what I will do, he says.

But in the confines of my bed, nursing this near paralysis, when I hear Isaiah’s laughter and Nick’s efforts to keep him occupied, I realize, with ringing clarity something that I could not have known or respected prior to going through it myself: our bodies are entirely different and our needs are entirely different.  My body endured all of this and my body cried differently than his. I knew this beforehand, but I never really Knew It beforehand.  Maybe my body never really cried until I became a mother.

So this difference between Nick and I exists.  It exists as sharp as a paring knife, as real as our love.  That difference – that my body changed while his did not – initially sprouted a rocketing resentment against anything him, society, and anyone else that didn’t Get It.  It = women’s bodies are a terrain that only we ourselves can travel.  It is not for anyone to lay laws upon.  It is not to be conquered, violated, disposed, or mishandled.  Along with the resentment, I also noticed a widening reverence for my body.  From which new life travels, the woman’s body is the canal to existence.  It is from our very bones, the calcium of our teeth, the marrow of our own breath that the woman’s body offers and sustains a new being.  The woman’s body is the epitome of automated self-sacrifice.  It is the ground zero of renewal — if the environment agrees that her life is valuable and the time to recover is respected.  We women, we give birth.  And we are also born into a new identity and a new body.

Give.  Birth.

Give.

Birth.

Are there two more powerful and daunting words in the English language?

But we women are also prone to set back and injury because of what our spines uphold.  Our bellies swell with life and our spines pull back to hold us up and in shape. Sometimes, though, the spine gives way and loses its strength.

Pain, whether it’s the lower back or elbow, or migraine, or menstrual, is a debilitating state of existence.  Not because of the physical pain itself.  It’s debilitating because chronic or severe pain draws our minds inward, incapable of fully giving of ourselves to anything or anyone else.  In pain, I become unlike myself.  I don’t unravel.  I do the opposite, I am mummified.  Most people, but especially me, are social beings.  I feel endorphins from conversation, laughter, and intellectual exchange.  However, in the confines of a bed and four walls, my spirit goes down.  My intellect goes dim and my emotions begin to go dark.  Swathed and cast in my own stillness and short breaths, pain dictates my freedom.  I no longer care about anything.  All that matters is finding a pain-free, mobile existence.  Which is why when I check all my social media outlets – email, Facebook, Twitter, newsfeeds, and listserves – I shake my head that the world is celebrating Mardi Gras and International Women’s Day.  I wish I had the energy to care.  I find all kinds of interesting stuff to read, but before my mind digests in the information, my back spasms again and I nearly drop my laptop in shock.

Pain draws us inward.

So for me, today, the one day (unfortunately) that calls women from all over the world to stand together, I lie in bed, with my eyes closed, waiting for relief.  Luckily, for me, I am certain of two things:

patience and writing can be worked on in bed

and

I do and can stand up for women’s rights and gender justice on a daily basis.  But right now, regaining my spiritual and psychological composure after a back injury and remembering the awesome capacity of a woman’s body seems like my fight for today.

Tomorrow it may be something else.

Mental Health and Sunshine

Published on by Lisa

I was recently in California and was taken to wine country.  From Ohio – where temperatures were in the teens and ice had sheathed the city of Cleveland – to this, a place of light, color, warmth, and flowing petals in the wind, I don’t know if I had smelled cleaner or sweeter air.  And the color!  The blue of the sky, the green of the grass, it took me to a calmer place.  Cleveland was battling more than just an embarrassing NBA losing streak, I could not remember the last time the sky was not overcast with heavy clouds.

Mental health is a topic that so many of us do not address.  It’s one of those topics that carries even more taboo than sexuality.  When you’re the one that brings it up, people assume you struggle and no one wants to think their moods, or feelings, or mind struggles with balance.

It’s a ridiculous assumption and expectation; to believe or make-believe that we are 100% in balance all the time.  We’re all plotted on the spectrum of mental health.  Depending on the conditions of our geography, stress, job, family, and relationships, our wellness fluctuates.  And that’s normal.  It’s more abnormal, I think, to say that you are unaffected by life, seasons, and sun exposure.

It’s critical to take care of our minds and spirits.  It’s critical not only for ourselves, but for those we live with.  Just ask Nick.

When I came home from California, I picked Nick up from classes.  I hadn’t seen him since I got home the previous night because our schedules didn’t match up.  When he got into the car, he saw me and his eyes grew as round as saucers as he exclaimed, “Wow!”

I smiled, “Missed me, huh?”

He stuttered, “Yeah, of course, but, not just that – YOU’RE GLOWING!”

I flipped down the visor and examined my face in the mirror, “I am?”

Nick took my hand, “Yes, you look so alive!”

If and when you can find it, find the sunshine to get you through the winter.  Get some sunshine, walk, breathe.

Never underestimate the power of a brief but timely vacation and the benefits of natural sunshine on your skin.  And write this on an index card and post it on your mirror, “If winter is here, can spring be far behind?”

Sunday Weigh-In: Round 3

Published on by Lisa

Worry not. I shall come roaring back. Next Sunday is Easter Sunday and, appropriately, you will see a second resurrection in addition to Christ’s.

It’s SO On

Published on by Lisa

For those who know us best, the gene that determines competitiveness runs strong in both Factora and Borchers families. It has to. I’ve never met anyone who’s more competitive than I am. That is, not until I met Nick.

Competitiveness comes in many forms. There’s the obvious kind that reveals itself in sports. The Michael Jordan/Tiger Woods (sans sex scandal) kind of competition. This is the “I CANNOT LOSE. EVER.” gene which makes athletes train twice as hard and cultivates a near military discipline that most of us civilians would find unbearable.

Then there’s other genes of competition, more subtle but just as lethal. This competitive gene revolves around the oratory debate stratosphere, aka “I MUST BE RIGHT. I AM RIGHT.” kind of thinking. It’s a gene that makes its way into the most innocuous of situations – bowling, finding a parking space, starting a campfire, any household project, insurance claims…

You think these situations are not competitive? Move in with us for a week, you’ll understand after that.

No matter what the situation, Nick and I often pit ourselves against the opponent, be a piece of stubborn firewood that will not flame up along with the others or a slow car in the Panera Bread parking lot who is blocking traffic. Everything’s a competition. No dispute too small, no challenge too big. There are two trophy words uttered in our house that carry more weight than anything: I WIN.

Sometimes it’s shouted, sometimes it’s whispered into a billowing pile of laundry. Whatever needs conquering shall be conquered in our house.

So, you can imagine the kind of raised eyebrows and smack talk in our marriage when the competition is between us. It can get ugly, but it’s always entertaining. Many people do not know that Nick is, as Keith Borchers said in his best man speech at our wedding, “an ego maniac who thinks he’s sweet at everything.”

Save opera and any form of dancing, this is true about Nicholas David Borchers. He hates losing. He can’t stand being second. He likes strategy and mind-games during poker. He’s all about focus and readjustment. Don’t be fooled by his calm demeanor. There’s a beast inside him called THE WINNER’S CIRCLE.

And then there’s me. Don’t think that I don’t have my own monster and even according to Nick, I may be more competitive than him. There’s a reason why I have the Rocky IV soundtrack on my iPod. Most people wouldn’t see it coming, kind of like a CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE that didn’t come up on your weather outlook.

My competitiveness is often stuffed away because of its monstrosity. It can and has ruined moments of friendly game playing. While everyone else shrugs after a loss, I seethe inside. Competitiveness is like a constant search for perfection, which can never be attained. So, the desire to win or be right or dominate knows no rest. But, it’s not always appropriate to be competitive so I, along with Nick, keep it to myself. We’re like two man-eating sharks in a Sea World tank: it’s in our blood and in our nature, but we’re trained to be harmless.

That was a long introduction into the heart of this post, but it’s critical for you to know the background of our competitive edges.

Nick and I have a combined goal to be and become healthier parents. Running around with Isaiah necessitates optimal states of health so we decided to commit to losing a few pounds. I need to shed my pregnancy weight and Nick, many months ago, invented a campaign called, “Don’t Get Fat” because of his fear of rolling into a “fat new dad.”

So we made a deal and the stakes are high.

Beginning Sunday, March 7th, we are having our own personal Biggest Loser competition. We adapted the show to our own lives and here are the ground rules:

Weekly weigh-ins on Sunday
Largest percentage of weight loss wins
Two goal dates: June 4, 2010 (our 5 year anniversary) and September 4, 2010.
Whoever has the largest percentage of weight loss on June 4, 2010 has the intermediate prize – winner gets one evening of their choice every week to go out and do whatever s/he wants while Isaiah is with the other parent.

If you don’t understand the impact of that reward, go back and read it again. This prize is HUGE. This can mean going out with your friends. For Nick it can mean going to play racquetball with Books and Sam or going to the library for a few hours. For me that means extended trips to a coffee shop or taking my time at a farmer’s market.

The ultimate prize, come September 4, will be individualized. Nick has yet to announce what his prize will be if he wins. If I win, I get to go to the conference of my choice in any part of the United States. (I’m such a nerd. I adore conferences on writing, feminism, media, etc…) Beside the fact that I want to shed my preggers weight, that conference-attending prize alone all by guarantees that I will win. Hello? Travel? Hotels? Learning? Meeting new writers and artists? That’s what I was born to do.

This competition is huge and normally, I would not post something like this on our blog, but I figured if our friends and family – and God knows who else on the internet is reading this – is in the know, we are accountable to seeing this through. And we will.

It’s man vs. woman. Focus vs. Passion. Tall vs. Short. Endurance vs. Intervals.

Choose your team now and place your bets. Nick is team blue. I am team green.

Cheers to a healthier Borchers/Factora-Borchers family in 2010.

(And, here’s to ME, cause you know I’m going to lick this thing…)

The Shot Heard Around Shaker Heights

Published on by Lisa

Yesterday was a normal day for most people. A typical fall day with Halloween costume chatting, and leaf raking commencing…a very normal day indeed.

And yet, a raging two month mental battle also ended yesterday with my wondering over whether or not to get the h1n1 shot.

I’m fairly knowledgeable about the issue. Research is one of my specialties and I spared no pamphlet or website when absorbing the pros and cons of vaccinations for pregnant women. Despite my insides telling me that regardless what I choose, I will likely be fine, my housemate seems to be a magnet for all local and national news reporting bad news about the swine flu. Steeped in worry, Nick passes the information along to me as if I need more momentum to swing me back and forth in my decision.

To get or not to get the h1n1 flu shot is risky. It’s risky either way, I saw it, and in the end, seeing how slow my body was recovering from a simple, albeit nasty, cold and cough, convinced me that I probably should go ahead and get stuck by the needle.

So, after work yesterday Nick and I made plans to get to the middle school where they were administering round #2 of the vaccine. I imagined it was going to take hours, Nick disagreed. Of course I was right.

But before I took the shot in my arm, I felt like I had to confess something to Nick. A deep, dark secret welling inside me like a balloon. I looked up at him in the kitchen over chopping Bok Choy and green beans for dinner and announced,”I realized today I have been stalling to get the shot because I think if anything goes wrong with the vaccination and hurts Isaiah, I’m afraid I’m going to blame you for the rest of our lives.”

There. I said it.

Nick had a confession as well. “Last week, when you were sick, all I kept thinking was that if you had the flu and something happened to Isaiah, I was going to blame you for not getting the shot for the rest of our lives, too.”

Immediately, I brightened, “Really? We were ready to blame each other for the rest of our lives? This sounds demented, but I feel SO much better!”

We hugged.

Now that our confessions were confessed, we headed to the middle school and saw the lines wrapping around the building. It took several minutes to find parking and finally got in line. It felt something like a combination of the lines at Cedar Point, a huge pediatrician’s office with a million kids running around, and a gigantic holiday sale where they haven’t opened the doors yet and make you wait outside.

In other words, it was hell.

Immoveable and inflexible situations are prime time conversation periods for me and Nick. The possibilities were endless. We had hours to wait, so talked about numerous things:

Nick’s Topics: the lack of efficiency when it came to setting up the lines (half the people were waiting outside when the whole middle school could have been utilized), his brainfart that he did not bring a heavier coat, how people were supposed to “prove” if you were on the priority list (pregnant people are kind of obvious, but healthcare workers? ), and other issues relating to orderliness and publicity.

I was fairly single-issue minded: WHY ISN’T THERE A SEPARATE LINE FOR PREGNANT WOMEN?

Seriously.

No chairs. Standing out in the chilly air with children running amok.

A thought occured to me and I shared it with Nick, “Do you think that it’s slightly ironic and even more slightly idiotic that they make us stand outside in the cold with a bunch of screaming children with no heat or chairs so we can get vaccinated for the FLU?”

The women behind me had a stroller for her perfectly big 6 or 7 year old. She was not careful with the wheels and kept rolling over the back of my foot. I was feeling a bit snappy but bit my tongue countless times. After all, she’d be right behind me for God knows how long.

We make it inside only to wait another hour or so. A volunteer took pity on my very pregnant state and asked if I wanted a chair. I nodded gratefully.

So, Nick held my place in line while I sat for about 20 minutes, giving my back and feet a rest. Watching Nick, I just shook my head while he made friends in line – chatting with people in front and behind him – and even helping a stranger get their stroller down the stairs. What a good samaritan. All I kept thinking of was how much I wanted a Twix bar.

I got back in line with Nick and discovered he’d made his own h1n1 support group in line. Everyone was offering us advice on birthing, breastfeeding, sleeping, pain meds, and Hillcrest Hospital where we’d be deliverying Isaiah. It was nice to be talking, inside the building and shielded from the cold, but my energy had depleted and I just wanted to get it over with.

Surprisingly, Nick was able to get a shot as well, thanks to Isaiah’s due date of 1.1.10, Nick qualified as a parent with a child less than 6 months.

Then came the time to decide whether to get nasal mist or the needle.

Another decision. Not my specialty.

The nasal mist is the activated vaccine. It has no mercury.
The needle is the inactivated vaccine with mercury to keep it germ free.

My only question was, “So where’s the INACTIVATED vaccine with NO MERCURY?”

One of the volunteers replied, “They are just starting to make that now, but we have no idea if or when those will ever come to the Cleveland area.”

Awesome.

So, loaded with all different kids of information pamphlets on brightly colored paper, we got in line – Nick in the nasal line, me in the needle line.

And within 3 minutes, it was over.

How can one seemingly simple decison be so complicated and anxiety-ridden?

As someone said to me, “Welcome to parenting.”

Germaphobe

Published on by Lisa

http://allaboutadvocacy.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/movie_i_see_dead_people.jpg
Kinda like how that little kid in The Sixth Sense said, “I see dead people,” in that freaky whisper, confiding to Bruce Willis his longtime secret and hidden power, that’s pretty much how I want to tell you

I see germs and bacteria.

Everywhere.

I’m becoming neurotic about washing my hands and walking 10 feet behind any living thing that I think looks pale, sounds raspy, or coughs into a shirt sleeve.

All this worrying is justified.

Yesterday, I woke up with a slight tickle in the back of my throat. By 11am, it had moved into a dry cough and irritating the hell out of me. (Coughing means I am constantly holding my belly and trying not to jostle Isaiah around as much.) By 6pm, scheduled to stay later for work, I sent an email to my boss explaining that my cough was getting worse, felt like my head was compressing, and felt a little warm on my forehead.

It could be a number of things. It could be a common cold. It could be the erratic change in climate (40-50s to high 60s in one day?). It could be the annual visit from the bronchitis family that loves to descend onto my lungs once the weather provides an easy transport. It could be the damn space heater in our bedroom that dries the room out. It could be that my office swings from sauna to freezer every other day. It could be that my hand sanitizer obsession is proving futile in the wake of GERM SEASON 2009. It could be something Nick brought home from hanging out with high school kids with youth ministry. (Yeah, I know – blame the spouse!) It could be…anything.

I don’t know.

So, I do what most people do when they’re in the limbo of sick and well — commiserate on the couch and think of the worst possible situations while flipping between Dancing with the Stars and the ALCS between the Angels and Yanks.

The worst thing is I feel stripped of energy yet unable to sleep.

To make team Borchers/Factora-Borchers even more hapless these days, Nick’s ear problems have returned with a vengeance. His ear is ringing, making his head feel like it’s going to explode each night and thus scheduling an appointment with an ear doctor. It never ceases to infuriate me how LONG it takes for ear doctors to understand that Nick is in a lot of discomfort and needs to be seen NOW. Not now-ish, or next week, but NOW. As in yesterday; that kind of now.

But he scheduled it last week and still has to wait until Monday. Until then, I try not to talk as loud or as much (that’s hard when I want to tell him all about my lungs and Isaiah’s latest acrobatic stunts), but we’re managing.

We’re still keeping ourselves busy. Nick is caulking the outdoor windows and I’m registering us for a bunch of baby classes and tours of the facility where I’ll be delivering. As thrilling as, “Baby Basics,” and “A Night with the Anesthesiologist” classes sounds, we’re not very exited over a jam packed November of classes and learning.

I keep thinking that people have become really effective and good parents by good ol’ fashion living and learning. Why do we have to go to these classes?

“Because we don’t know anything about anything,” says Nick.

In the end, I concur, “It’s probably a good idea to figure out how to use a car seat, I guess.”

Is the World Ready?

Published on by Lisa

Everyone who knows keeps asking, “Are you ready?”

And all I keep thinking, “Are WE ready? It’s more like is the WORLD ready for another human who is 1/2 me and 1/2 Nick?”

Yes, friends, family, and loved ones, the day has finally arrived, if you haven’t already guessed from small leaks (or as Nick would say, “…the weakest links in our circuit of family and friends,”) that we are expecting a little one to grace our lives and expand the family. I am pregnant!

Oh, the anticipation…oh the relief of FINALLY being able to blog and write about the past 9 weeks.

Let me tell you, keeping a secret is just not my thing, especially when it’s so joyous!

Roughly 7 weeks ago, I knew I was pregnant even before those stick tests told me so. Here were the big clues:

1) I’ve been a deep sleeper since I was born. I can sleep through a hurricane. Out of nowhere, I start waking up in the middle of the night, uncomfortable.

2) I start getting horrible abdominal gas pains and my body is bloated like a marshmallow.

3) Everything, even the taste of water, is bitter and tastes like liver in my mouth.

4) I feel, how shall you say, different.

I just freaking knew. I mean, I just knew. But 6 pregnancy tests later, it was confirmed and what a day it was….

It was a Sunday. I woke up at 6am because I couldn’t sleep (remember clue #1) and Nick woke up about an hour later to find me sitting up in bed, thinking. I took the test and left the stick in the bathroom, yelling at Nick to get out of the bathroom, “WE WON’T LOOK AT IT! WE WON’T LOOK AT IT! IT’LL BE TORTURE! LET’S GO TO ANOTHER ROOM FOR TWO MINUTES!”

So we go to the bedroom and pace the floor. Well, Nick paces the floor and starts blabbering about the 101 reasons why the test could be false negative and we should look at the chances of it being wrong and how we should definitely take another one tomorrow and how so many factors could disrupt the accuracy of the results…When Nick is reasoning aloud really fast, he makes me even more nervous because he’s never nervous.

When two minutes are up, I charge into the bathroom and see a very large PLUS sign and worldlessly go up to the Papa to be and present the test two feet above my head, aka, Nick’s eye level. Never, in all the years I’ve loved Nick, ever saw his face look so purely joyous and excited (not even when he married me, imagine that…). We didn’t say a word, just hugged for a long time while I started to cry of course.

Then we flopped ourselves on our bed and were quiet. Finally, I broke out and said, “So, there’s a baby inside me and we’re gonna be parents.”

Nick flops over to look at me, “I know, it’s crazy isn’t it?”

“Crazy? Try insane and unthinkable. WE. US. WE ARE GOING TO BE PARENTS. Like, a life is OUR responsibility.”

But nothing could taint our joy, disbelief, and excitement.

Nick left for El Salvador two days after our big news and it was torture not to tell anyone. So I burned the secret to my sister, Christina here in Cleveland, and my mom. I was DYING to tell someone and Nick was gone for 5 days. I just couldn’t wander the world without anyone to share it with.

We’ve had two doctors appointments and everything looks excellent. We already heard the baby’s heartbeat and are floored by each little miracle of our little pinto bean growing inside me. It’s so wonderful and simultaneously terrifying.

A lot of people wonder how we told people so early. Our doctors warned us that we shouldn’t spill the beans until the 11th week or so. Nick and I thought awhile about that and then finally came to our conclusion: understandably, you don’t want to get everyone excited when there’s such a chance of miscarriage. But, all the people in our lives who we trust and would want to know we had a miscarriage would also want to know if we were pregnant. The same people we’d turn to in times of sadness are the same people we’d turn to share our miracle. And so we decided to tell folks around 6 weeks and pray for a safe journey for our little one.

We tried to tell as many people face to face as we could, but alas, life is complicated and news travels fast.

Little Pinto is expected to come into the world January 1, 2010.

So, like I said…it’s not a matter if WE’RE ready, but is the world ready?