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September 9, 2003
Before I forget the details, I want to dedicate this entry to some of the highlights of my pregnancy with Ella. I’m just dying to get to our present-day life, and I feel like the sooner I get through these “history” entries the better!
Following an early miscarriage, I felt slightly obsessive about becoming pregnant again, and I began to take prenatal vitamins, abstain from the occasional drinking binge with friends, and generally beg my sick husband to have sex with me. This brings me to a big issue: Matt’s health.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier entries, Matt’s sister had ulcerative colitis as a child (until they removed her colon, leaving nothing left to be “ulcerative”). Shortly after Matt and I met, he began showing symptoms of the disease as well, but it wasn’t until almost a year later that he sought medical help and was misdiagnosed with another form of colitis. The doctors told him that they didn’t know what caused it, if it was hereditary or not, but that there was nothing Matt could do but take the prescribed medication. They also said that Matt’s diet had nothing to do with it, a statement that made no sense to either one of us at the time because hey, what’s moving through the colon but the stuff you eat. The prescribed medication was not only ineffective and “painful” to administer, it seemed to be making things worse. But, Matt stuck it out thinking things would improve. Because his symptoms involved losing nutrients (I don’t want to get too graphic), Matt’s appetite soared and he ate a ridiculous amount of food and weighed more than he had ever weighed in his life (almost 215 pounds the day we were married).
The Christmas following our wedding marked the beginning of a long bout of serious illness for him during which he began rapidly losing lots of blood and 60 pounds in a matter of three months. His six foot three inch frame became skeletal and anemic, and he began battling some serious depression. Luckily depression for Matt is met with a strong punch of optimism, and he left his latest doctor’s office, at which he was given a brochure and video about colon removal surgery, with a newfound determination to find a better defense.
That night I remember seeing his skinny body hunched over his computer, searching the internet, and when I awoke in the morning he was already up and gone. He returned with a book, “Breaking the Vicious Cycle,” he had read about online that details a diet to combat his illness. How could he have missed this during all his previous research? As we read the book together, everything made sense: colitis issues are the result of bacterial imbalances in the colon that cause the “bad” bacteria to run amok and do serious damage to the lining of this vital organ. The book, which has hundreds of 5 star ratings and customer reviews on Amazon.com and an incredible internet following in general, directs sufferers to completely eliminate sucrose from their diet. No sugar. At all. No grains of any kind: no wheat, no rice, no corn. No processed foods, No milk. Anything that breaks down into sucrose in the body is like acid to a damaged colon. It sounded daunting to remove all of these things from his diet—sugar is in everything, and to be honest, the process was overwhelming, time-consuming and very expensive. But, the results were immediate: no more blood loss, no more weight loss, no more intense, chronic pain day in and day out. It was a veritable miracle. For the next six months, Matt followed the diet religiously and slowly began to climb out of the foggy hell of illness.
Slowly throughout the next year, he reintroduced some of the restricted foods to his diet, and went through the trial and error of figuring out what his body can and cannot handle. Today he manages his health by monitoring certain foods like pasta, bread and highly acidic fruits and vegetables and avoiding baked goods, processed foods and refined sugar all together. For the most part, he is healthy now. He rides his bike and sails and rows and works fiendishly and plays with Ella as much as he wants. However, occasionally and usually in times of stress or weakness (like when he just can’t resist eating some forbidden food), he will relapse and be forced to be more restrictive with his diet again. It’s an ongoing process.
Back to getting pregnant… My miscarriage happened during the initial upswing of Matt’s health after learning about the diet, and sex was not a frequent occurrence. Still weak and low on energy, we had a difficult time with the trying part. Fortunately, it didn’t take that many tries... Here is my long-winded conception story.
For our first anniversary, we decided to take a sailing trip in the San Juan Islands over Labor Day weekend. Our boat was moored at our boat partner’s cabin on one of the islands, and we picked it up by seaplane. In fact, we stepped off the plane’s pontoon directly onto the deck of our boat. We sailed around the islands for a day and tied down at the Port of Friday Harbor Marina for two nights. As was common practice during our pre-child sailing trips, we ate and drank and ate and drank endlessly, going to one place for drinks before dinner, another place for long-winded, fancy meals and then passing out on the boat stuffed and not a little intoxicated. On our anniversary, we went to the Friday Harbor House restaurant and ate one of the most exceptional meals of our lives. We still talk about how fabulous everything tasted and how we made the other taste every exquisite item set before us. As is common practice for us on vacations and during celebratory dinners like these, we spent much of the later evening lounging over coffee and port and taking pictures of one another from across the table. The other patrons must think we’re a couple of bozos snapping away and posing for the camera. Life’s too short to care, right? Matt got on a straight-faced kick during that trip, in which he wanted us to avoid smiling for pictures. He kept proclaiming that we didn’t have any pictures that capture what we “usually” look like (because God knows we don’t smile ALL the time!). Needless to say, he got over that photography phase, and looking back on those stoic-faced photos now is absolutely hilarious.
The next day, we set out for home and made it as far as Kingston, which if you’re familiar with the area and the speed of a sailboat you will know is quite a distance. Discretion aside, Ella was conceived on that long day on the Puget Sound aboard our old boat, Lila. It was a glorious day in September, and we felt on top of the world, healthy and madly in love.
When we returned from our trip, my younger brother, Rob, moved in with us for a few months, and shortly after that the terrible events of September 11th rocked the world and our lives. When I finally learned I was pregnant at about 9 weeks, it felt like a huge jolt of life. The minute I hung up with my doctor, I called Matt and told him the news. I think he was on his cell phone in the car—so typical of our life, and his reaction was a mixture of “I knew it” and downright joy. I then called my parents who were ecstatic, and that evening I remember sitting on my bed telephoning Jessica and hearing her practically cry and shout on the other end, “Thank God because I am too!” She knew how badly I wanted to be pregnant, and was worried that she would hurt me if I weren’t as well. And then just weeks later, my friend Roberta learned of her pregnancy. I was immediately surrounded by women who understood my hormone-induced delirium. Yippee!
So caught up in all the commotion of 9/11, my brother in our home, and with the holidays approaching, my first trimester passed quickly. Before I got pregnant, I didn’t typically eat between meals, and one thing that threw me off for at least the first two months was struggling to remember to eat snacks. I’d constantly be famished and seriously grumpy by 5:30 because I hadn’t eaten anything since noon. I finally got the hang of it though… I did get quite a bit of exercise in that first trimester because I signed up (before learning I was pregnant) for two consecutive month-long yoga intensives: every morning for an hour and half, Monday through Friday. But by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was feeling bone-lazy and didn’t do much of anything for most of December and January.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, my mother invited me to join her in Washington DC for a long weekend—two girls in the city. Working for the State Department, she is very familiar with our nation’s capital, and we had a terrific time. Having decided to apply for a promotion, my mom was in town for a round of oral examinations, which ultimately did not go as well as she’d hoped, but we managed to enjoy a rare opportunity to be together. We went shopping, out to nice dinners, saw a few movies and generally made the most of our time in DC.
Around Christmas, Matt finally reacted to the pregnancy with his first wild notion: let’s take a 4400-mile road trip in the Porsche 911. Uh, okay. This leads me to mention Matt’s obsession with cars, but I’ll try to be brief. Matt has owned over 50 cars, and since we’ve been married we’ve gone through three, separate five-car fleets. Are you millionaires you ask? Um no, far from it. All of the cars are used, and the man is hands-down the best car salesman and buyer you will ever meet. He is constantly bringing his latest find to one of his many favorite mechanics who then rant and rave about what a find/steal/amazing vehicle he found. Currently, we own a 1991 BMW 318i, a 1991 Toyota 4Runner, a 1987 Mercedes 300E, a 1983 Porsche 911 and a 1976 Honda CVCC hatchback (Matt’s version of a used Mini), and all of these cars did not total the expense of a new SUV. I won’t get into the logistics of dealing with these cars day-to-day except to say that it’s a constant in our lives: one needs to go to the shop, the other to get an oil change, another to be smog tested, and of course, the one with Ella’s car seat is blocked and we need to move all of them to get out! Not only do we own five cars, but Matt sees fit to offer to buy and sell cars for friends and even business associates all the stinkin’ time. Frequently, I remind myself that this is one of Matt’s passions, and I need to respect his appreciation for this fleet in our driveway (it’s a very long driveway) and just roll my eyes. I knew he was like this when I married him.
So, how could I deny him what was certainly his last major road-trip in the 911 for many years? We left on December 23rd, and made it to Ashland, Oregon that evening. After car wash number one, we zoomed into Pleasant Hill, California in time for another car wash and Christmas Eve dinner with his mom and stepfather. We stayed for a lovely Christmas celebration, and headed to Riverside, California to see my paternal extended family on the 26th. The next day after, you guessed it, another car wash, we drove to Murietta to see my maternal extended family and then headed to San Diego that afternoon for four nights. We stayed in a nice hotel in the downtown area and spent our first day exploring and recuperating from our flash family visits. The following day, after a car wash, was spent dropping in on some of Matt’s old college friends and their families, which gave us a chance to visit quite a bit of the northern San Diego area. We spent the next day with some of my college friends who happened to be in town from Davis visiting relatives for the holidays, and we all went for a walk on Coronado Island and had lunch in a great little pub. Matt and I absolutely fell in love with Coronado and vowed that, should we ever have the funds, we would one day buy a house there. Onward to Phoenix, Arizona for New Year’s Eve, where we visited with Matt’s best college friend, Sander, and stayed at the Ritz (we got a fantastic deal online!). After a pancake breakfast with Sander and another car wash the next day, we drove to Sedona and stayed the night in a quaint little B n’ B. Again, we got up the next day and drove to Santa Fe, NM where we were supposed to stay with Matt’s best high school friend. We tried calling him all day, but he never answered or returned our calls. So, we got a room at the El Dorado, arguably one of the nicest places in town, where we also got an exceptional rate due to poor reservations after September 11th. We also went through a car wash. That evening, one of my best high school friends, who was in town for the holidays, met us at the hotel and took us out to a very fancy dinner. We finally got in touch with Matt’s friend the next morning, and after an awesome breakfast and some shopping with my friend, we met up with his friend’s entire family for the afternoon and dinner at his parents’ mansion. I’ve been hearing stories about this family for years because Matt practically grew up with them, but I was still stunned by their wealth and their unbelievable home—every room was a work of art, truly. Guess what we did the next day…? We drove from Santa Fe to Cheyenne, Wyoming with a stop for lunch in Denver, Colorado. After another car wash (does it ever end?) the following day, we made it all the way to Bozeman, Montana, and on the last day of our trip we made it all the way back to Seattle. I bet your asking yourself how you could make it that far in three days when only a moderate time amount of time was spent driving. Well, we averaged 110 mph over the course of the entire trip (with the help of a radar detector), and in case you think that’s just INSANE. I agree. Matt drove the entire time, and when you’re traveling at those speeds there really isn’t a lot of room for casual conversation... He seemed to really enjoy himself though, and although it wasn’t my dream vacation I loved the scenery, visits with friends and family and the sheer novelty of it.
Following our vacation, I got off my butt and decided to exercise. Jessica and I started meeting about 3 mornings a week before work for a brisk, cold walk around Greenlake, and Roberta and I usually did the alternate days in the afternoons after work. There were many days when I did that walk twice, and by March I think I had gained several pounds of muscle. Speaking of weight, I started my pregnancy off at a good but not ideal weight and gained about 6 pounds in the first trimester. By the middle of the second, it was clear that I was not going to fall in the 25-30 pound average as I was already close to 30. I’m a quarter inch shy of six foot and have the advantage of gaining weight gracefully, but this was different than any of the other times I had gained weight in the past. In college, I gained 60 pounds between my freshman and junior years, and between January and March of my junior year I lost all of it. I didn’t starve myself or even exercise fiendishly. I just stopped eating the ridiculous portions I could get away with in high school. Gone were the days of guilt-free indulgences and extreme over eating that I had allowed myself during my tri-letter high school years. It was clear after I lost that weight that it was never meant to be on my frame. But my pregnancy weight was entirely different. Everything about it, particularly the way it was distributed, truly seemed like it was put there for a greater purpose. Matt commented one night that I had about an inch of extra padding on my entire body, and while coming from anyone else’s mouth but his I would have taken serious offense, he seemed so pleased about it that I just agreed. It was true. He also told me that he liked my new, big butt, and that, I thought, was pushing it. In the end, I gained a little over 50 pounds, but like I mentioned earlier, I think some of it was muscle (in addition to my huge baby).
By about the end of March, Matt got the typical manly, my-wife-is-pregnant hankering to remodel our house. We’d been talking about doing the entire upstairs since we moved in, but we ended up settling on the scaled-back plan of painting and re-carpeting the bedrooms, painting the bathroom, fixing the sagging dry-wall ceiling in our bedroom, and installing a new vanity and sink for our bathroom. For most of the project, we moved into our basement guest bedroom, and by May when we were able to go back into the upstairs, I was beside myself with excitement: the baby was coming and our house felt so new and clean and fresh. I was also ecstatic to shave my legs again—my swollen body had gone without smooth legs for two months because I couldn’t possibly bend over in the tiny shower stall in our guest bathroom. In both my prenatal yoga class and our childbirth class, I think the majority of the couples were undergoing some sort of home remodel. It must be the fatherly nesting instinct!
Speaking of those classes, I thought they were both invaluable. I took renowned prenatal yoga instructor Collette Crawford’s class, and after every session I felt at peace and closer to welcoming my baby. Granted, I wanted to strangle some of the women in the pre-class getting-to-know-one-another session that occurred before each and every practice—the ones that thought this group could double as their personal therapy. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the camaraderie and commiserative quality of a room full of pregnant women, but the ones who felt obligated to waste everyone’s time with a ten-minute diatribe about why they were sooooo exhausted made me squirm every week. Luckily, the class’s calming and physical aspects far outweighed my annoyance. Similarly, Matt and I were fortunate to take ’s out-of-hospital childbirth class, and nothing and no one could have prepared us the way she did. Penny offered a gentle blend of current politics and persuasive reasoning for natural childbirth with effective, hands-on preparedness techniques for following your instincts and finding a rhythm in labor. Particularly helpful were the videos she played in class, ones filmed at births she had attended that depicted a variety of ways in which to labor and deliver. I don’t know how Matt would have survived Ella’s birth if it weren’t for those videos (even though he watched them with his hand over his eyes!).
At the end of March, Matt and I traveled to Quebec City for one of his closest friend’s wedding. The entire weekend affair took place at the Chateau Frontenac, an amazing hotel overlooking one of the most beautiful old cities of North America. A blizzard and record low temperatures plagued the area that week, and Matt’s reaction to the cold (having only lived in warm climates) was hysterical. He went around telling anyone who would listen that he thought everyone who lived in this town was insane and that he felt like the wind was going to literally kill him. He simply could not believe that it actually got colder! The night we arrived, it was about –10 degrees Fahrenheit and the men and women went on separate excursions: bachelor and bachelorette festivities, if you will. It was the first time I’d been dancing in months, and let’s just say I couldn’t get my groove on. Oh yeah, and while I was walking through the club some total sicko grabbed my ass. I mean really, who grabs a pregnant woman’s ass?
The next morning (the day before the wedding), we went to a traditional sugar shack where we learned how maple syrup is processed and then enjoyed a gigantic meal in an old-fashioned dining hall with a live accordion band. Sounds corny, right? It was, but we all had such a great time that it didn’t matter how silly it was. That night we went out to eat a terrific French meal with many of our friends from Seattle and then went to an intimate nightclub to listen to live music. The next day, Matt and I seriously lounged: ate a big, fancy lunch, went swimming, and hung out in our room before the wedding. The ceremony was lovely, although not quite as moving as I expected, but the reception was a complete blast. A group of the bride’s French-Canadian friends grabbed the MC’s microphone, stood up in front of everyone and sang a song for the happy couple. This spurred a competitive streak in Matt, and the next thing I knew he had convinced our table to follow suit with a little number of our own. Before we knew it the whole place had launched counter attacks and the party was off to a fun start. We danced and danced, and it was the first time in months that I felt attractive and even a little sexy in my high heels and snazzy Pea in a Pod dress. The flight home proved to be my first incident with severe swelling—the stumps in shoes look is never flattering.
Another highlight of my pregnancy was the lovely mother-daughter shower my friend Nicole hosted for me on Mother’s Day. She and her husband, who used to be Matt’s roommate back in their bachelor days, live on Bainbridge Island in a gorgeous rambler with an amazing deck, on which the party took place. It was the first warm day of summer, and also the first time since my flight from Montreal that I experienced swelling. My feet looked like veritable blimps smooshed into flip-flops. Everyone kept giving me these pitiful grimaces and saying, “Are you sure you don’t want to put your feet up. Here, here’s a chair.” Nicole put out quite a spread, offered cake, and even made us play some tasteful shower games (tasteful being the key word). During my pregnancy, I attended about four baby showers and at every single one I won a prize. So, of course, I won one of Nicole’s beautiful floral arrangement prizes for the taste-the-baby-food game. It seemed absurd for me to be taking a prize at my own shower, but everyone insisted. My friends and the mothers who could come were so incredibly generous, and gifts included a boppy pillow, various adorable clothing items, several handmade things including embroidered t-shirts and blankets, toys, bottles, two diaper bags, and on and on. It was amazing. That night, in a fit of nesting power, I wrote all my thank you notes, clipped tags from every item I received, and did all of Ella’s little laundry. I was totally beat by the time I crawled into bed on what Matt coined my Zeroth Mother’s Day. Speaking of Matt, I should mention that he took me out to our favorite breakfast place, Portage Bay Café, where we sat on their outdoor patio and he gave me the receipt for my zeroth Mother’s Day gift: the red sofa chair I’d been eyeing for months. It matches the sofa that sits in our movie/sound room (have I even touched on those two hobbies yet?), and we plan to move it from the nursery to join its sister-sofa when my nursing days are over. How practical of us…
All in all, my pregnancy with Ella was a wonderful experience. I kept expecting to wake up one day and be miserable, to have bad back pain or want to scream the next time I had to pee, but I never really get to that place. I constantly met other pregnant women who hated every minute, and for good reasons like nausea, itchiness, back pain, etc., and I always felt lucky for my good health and comfort. I’m sure I just had it easy, or perhaps I anticipated the minor pains and annoyances to be more severe and felt invigorated by the fact that they weren’t as bad as I expected. Thinking back on it now, I feel so excited to experience it all over again: the rumbles and kicks, the miniature baby hiccups, the beautifully taut belly, the surge of emotions and feeling a life, a little person as miraculous and individual and complete as Ella, grow from my body. I can’t wait to begin the cycle of life all over again.
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