not much to report

I have no cute pictures of the kids. No reports of fun adventures. This blog is going to be seriously seriously boring for awhile.

My days are all the same.  I get up and it all starts over again.  On the upside, my PICC line seems to be working better than the peripheral IVs. Nurses come every few days to change the dressing. I push my own meds, I have 900 plastic syringes around the house, and conversations like this:

me: so, before I hook up the hydration to the PICC line, do I flush with 5mL saline and heparin, or just saline?


nurse: no, just saline, but after you do the slow push of zofran and after hydration, you flush with saline AND 3 to 5mL heparin and do it pulsating, don't forget to clamp the line.

it's not hard, it's just mundane.

A few folks have asked what a PICC line is, so here is a little diagram: I have a spaghetti noodle sized plastic tube about 12 inches long that runs from a vein in the middle of my bicep and rests near my heart. Through it I pump a liter of a watery version of gatorade every night and medication to help me not throw up several times a day. It works 75% of the time which is great. It doesn't take away the nausea, or give me any energy, but much of the time I can keep down my tiny meals.

If I need any lab work or if my doctor decides I am not eating enough, they can get blood from, and put calories into me through this tube. So far the only down sides are the beeping of the IV pump in the middle of the night, keeping it dry while showering -which requires a whole lot of plastic and tape and luck- and some heart palpitations that may mean I need to have the PICC pulled out a little.

I don't go anywhere, I don't do anything.

I miss being a human. I miss being able to hug my kids or my husband.  The smell of other people makes it really hard to be close to anyone, even the smell of soap, even mild Johnsons baby soap makes me sick.

I miss the world. I miss my family. I miss friends. I miss contributing to the world.

I freaking hate asking my family members to fetch me things because I can't do anything for myself except sleep and pee. I hate saying "Could you please toast the bread a little more this time, it was a little soggy before."  I feel like a snob at a restaurant, sending back the cranberry juice because it was a Cran Raspberry mix and that is just nasty.

My mom forgives easily, and is quite brilliant: she brought in the kids' doll house and dollies into my bedroom so I can listen to them play while I lie in bed. It's wonderful. They are such troopers. 

This whole Mom No Longer Can Take Care of Us In Any Way thing has been really hard on Janie girl.  My only hope and prayer is that neither child will remember this time.

They both have sat next to me on my bed while I vomited, while I was stuck with a new IV line, while I hook up my meds - to be honest, they have much stiffer spines than their Dad, who isn't able to handle much in the "medical" arena.

I will survive. Others have it worse, I know that.

I know that.

I love getting up to the computer once or twice a week to look at your blogs. I love seeing that life and the world still exist out there. I look forward to being apart of it again some day.

And not boring the universe with lame blog posts with no pictures. I know that graphic up there doesn't count.

the ultimate weight loss program

If I could bottle up some of my crazy pregnancy hormones and sell them (minus the growing fetus part), we'd really be on to something here for weight loss. I could make a fortune!

Here is what will happen with your new diet plan:

You inject the hormone. 24 hours later, you start to wish food has never been invented. The smell, the sight, the description, the taste, the mere idea of any kind of food whatsoever is disgusting. You can't even watch TV because commercials show foods from places that obviously want you dead, like Long John Silvers, or TGI Barfys.

The pleasure you once had in tasting food is gone; smells of things that are normally lovely, like cake, oranges, baking lasagna, you name it, it makes you want to gag. (I just had to leave to be sick for typing out those food items.)

The acts of chewing and swallowing are not pleasant. You attack tiny portions of near tasteless and odorless foods -which of course all are low calorie, like bread, apple slices, an occasional cracker, maybe some cheese- with grim determination because you know you have to eat, but you simply have lost your ability to enjoy it.

You live in a suspended state of that uniquely awful feeling you have about 3 minutes before you are going to vomit. You know that feeling. You remember it from the last time you had food poisoning or the flu. Sometimes you do vomit, sometimes you don't. But you always feel like you're going to vomit.

The best part of this diet plan is that everyone in your home is affected, because the smell of all foods is so disgusting to you that no one else is allowed to eat either! So really, if your entire household is in need of controlling their eating, only one of you has to be injected! Everyone suffers/benefits!

There are downsides of course. If you are burning any calories whatsoever, you're going to be hungry all the time, which is a really hard feeling to reconcile yourself to when the concept of feeding that hunger makes you want to stab your eyes out.  Thus, despite all your wishes, you have to eat like 5 times a day, which really is what nutritionists tell you you should do anyway. Several small meals a day, instead of 2 or 3 big ones.  A meal can consist of things like:
half a clementine and 3 tortilla chips
Or 4 grapes and a half piece of toast
A handful of crackers and one bite of an apple slice

Absolutely under no circumstances can you stand anything like meat, or onions, or anything cooked within 50 feet of your person. You cannot go into or near restaurants. Or any establishment that prepares or sells food. Like a mall is totally out. Or Target because they have that food court that contains frightening food-like items that would cause you to pass out.

This diet plan also works for out of control spending. You won't be able to go anywhere so it's much easier to curb unnecessary shopping. Your gas bill will go way down!

Really, it only takes a week or two on this diet plan to appreciate healthy, normal, balanced eating. You will vow (when it's over) to awake every day with a sense of gratitude for the great gift of good health and take care of your body. You'll want to eat well, exercise well. The sky will be bluer, the grass will be greener. You'll promise never to abuse your precious body again.

And you'll be thrilled for the injection to wear off after a few weeks, a few pounds trimmer, a new resolve in your heart.  *Nothing to it.

*Disclaimer: There is one small danger of the Staci Diet Plan. If you are on the hormone too long your body can go into a scary mode. This is bad. Your body starts thinking "Holy hell, she's starving!" and starts hanging on to every calorie you eat. So whenever you do start eating normally, your metabolism is all messed up and you gain weight at rates you thought were humanly impossible. The stretch marks from your rapid gaining will never go away, but within a few months, your body will figure it out. Do not go on the hormone for more than a month. Unless you're me, and there's nothing you can do about it but wait.

For my part, I will be on the diet plan a few more months. Technically, I didn't need to lose any weight at the start but hey, that's life.  I told Andrew that all the mulah we save on me not eating and not going out on dates for the next 8 months is going into a special fund:

A Go to New York and go to Freaking Amazing Restaurant(s) When This is All Over Fund.  Anyone who has been to NY and has recommendations I am accepting them now. I can't go to their websites and see pictures or descriptions of the food, no. That will make it so I can't keep down my dinner of 3 tablespoons of cottage cheese and sip of juice.

But I will someday.

A girl's gotta dream. Help me out.

thankful thursday

I am copying my friend Liz, who does this. I think it's in order.

I am thankful I spent some time in the hospital this week, because it was AWESOME. I am not kidding. I freaking love hospitals.* I love that at the push of a button someone comes running to meet a need. I love that pretty much everyone who works in a hospital is by career and by law supposed to make my life better.

(*Except for a very unfortunate terrible experience at Beth Israel Deaconess in Needham, MA where I was misdiagnosed, treated unkindly, had completely unnecessary surgery, was ignored for hours, had a surgeon doing rounds actually notice my room was filthy, the cleaning crew who came harassed me for being a snob when it wasn't me that even tattled about the state of the room among other horrors. But other than that, I LOVE hospitals).

I am thankful that yesterday I had two nurses worth their weight in gold. The first put in a wicked awesome IV in a severely dehydrated, shriveled up vein. It hurt like the dickens but she got it in on the first stick and it is in the best spot. A nurse who knows what she's doing does the side of your forearm, NOT near your elbow joint. That way you can move your arm and sleep comfortably. You can't feel a good IV. Thank you Martha of Antenatal Care in Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

The second nurse outshone the genius of the first: it was the little things.  She turned on the bathroom light and cracked the door open instead of flipping on the bright overhead flourescent lights when she came in my room. Where did she learn such kindness?  She brought me a ziploc bag of lemon wedges that I could smell whenever something made me nauseated (which is often.) This is so far in all of my pregnancies the best trick to fight against my crazy hyper sensitive olfactory glands. I slept last night for several hours with my face in a ziploc bag of lemons. Call it weird, I call it survival.

She even helped convince my OB - wonderful, kind, humane, funny Dr. Richer - that I should get the best present I've ever gotten upon discharge.  No, maybe the best present I've gotten ever.

They left my IV needle and port in. I am home now and my IV needle is still in. Do you understand how amazing this is?  I will spell it out:  I am going to get IVs at home. For awhile, several times a week. This people, is why I am grateful today. For the prayers that ushered Trisha the Nurse into my life yesterday. She took care of me.  For the prayers that made helped my doctor see how much I needed this.

This is how I may just make it. This is how I will be able to be human. I smiled last night like I haven't smiled in weeks.



I am so thankful. Your entries into the  "Have you Ever" game made me laugh, too. Thanks for playing! Time to lie down again. I don't want to push my luck. I don't want to kill the buzz from my last IV.

shower the people you love with love

thank you, thank you for the hoardes of kind thoughts, prayers, words of encouragement. i feel like i just got a nation-wide shower of good feeling.

my heart is full.

do you want to play a game since it kinda feels like a shower? let's play, Have You Ever?

The rules are, I say "Have you ever..." And in the comments section you respond "No, but have you ever...." with your own experience. Does NOT have to be pregnancy or body related. It can be weird, funny, gross, tell me something I don't know about you, in fact, this could be your ultimate chance to de-lurk if you read this blog but have never commented. Think of it as a present to a sick girl.  Keep in mind I am rocking the most sensitive gag reflex you've ever encountered.

Here is how we will start- with my experience from last night: Have you ever fainted in the shower and called out for help for one hour while the two other adults in the house were sleeping and/or watching LOST with earbuds in so they couldn't hear you --AND your water heater never ran out of hot water before they finally came?

It's your turn.

changes

"If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans." - Cutting for Stone


I've written and rewritten and deleted this post in my mind about thirty times. Actually, I've had to work on it about nine times because I can't sit up to my computer for very long.

We are anywhere around two to ten weeks from our referral for two lovely, wondeful bebes from Ethiopia. After more than a year of work, prayers and mostly-happy tears, we are realistically looking at just a few short months until jumping on a plane and bringing these children into our lives. We've been up to our eyeballs in excitement and preparation and our hearts are in Ethiopia.

But ---- we just had to place our adoption on hold. 

Apparently my craptastic ovaries and God decided to play a bit of a joke on us and I find myself unexpectedly, unplannedly, and still a bit unwelcomly pregnant.

Now, normally this is a cause for high fives amid married couples.  For us, I don't know exactly how to word this without causing offense, but a positive pregnancy test felt a bit like a guillotine dropped on us.

Saying my body does.not.do.pregnancy.well. is a bit of an understatement.

You can read all about the months of vomit and not being able to go anywhere unless pushed in a wheelchair, the IVs, the hospitalizations; the horror-- in past blog posts, but suffice it to say we did not want to put my body, my brain, and our family through that again.

In fact, I've been glowing in gratitude and peace for the last two years that adoption is the way we will grow our family from here on out. Amen.

You'd never met a girl more content with not trying to get pregnant ever again.

And yet, here I am.  I haven't been able to care for the kids for a few weeks now. I spend 24 hours a day in bed, hugging myself in the fetal position trying to get to a semi-conscious state where I can't feel nausea and pain. I have no idea how I will get through today let alone almost a year of this kind of sickness, again.

I hate that this pregnancy feels a bit devestating at its onset. I want to be able to rejoice in a baby coming to our family. I guess the thing is, our hearts WERE rejoicing for TWO babies coming here. And they were not coming here in my sucky uterus. The shift in plans is a lot to take in.

My heart is in pain and empathy and love for every woman I know who lives with infertility.  Because it is unfair. It is unjust. I don't know how to sensitively talk about how I am feeling. For that I am deeply sorry. I feel like some horrid mistake has been made.

Somehow I have to get willing, and I have to become able, when I thought I'd never be willing or able to do this again. I am fighting an ever darkening cloud of depression that accompanies all my pregnancies that whispers "you're never going to make it. Never." It's hard to think rationally when living in suspended, constant world of nausea and vertigo and migraine.

And we are mourning our adoption. We can't stop thinking about our kids in Ethiopia.  We told 3-year-old Janie who responded "Mom, our Ethiopian babies are in your tummy and that's why you're sick??"  At least I am not the only one confused.

Our adoption agency is a GEM because they are being ultra supportive and will allow us to place our file on hold for the time being. They actually would allow us to move forward, bless them, but since I haven't actually gone downstairs in several days and can't keep down more than a few hundred calories a day; since I can't even care for my current children or myself for that matter, the hold is our best option.

I know there is a glimmer of hope. I won't feel like this forever. There are many people in the world who wake up in pain every day and always will. My suffering has an expiration date. Someday I will be able to walk, eat, and care for my children again. I am lucky. I am blessed. And my reward: a little bundle of yumminess. That's a pretty great thing.

And this is also a lot to think about, but apparently there are going to be five Hopkin children because we still 193% committed to adopting two children from Ethiopia. Just not as soon as we'd planned.  This makes me weep. Putting on brakes so close to the finish line.

So, for now, I am trying to reach a place of peace and acceptance. I am not there. I cry an unseemly amount and stare at the ceiling in my room asking it "Why?"  It hasn't answered back yet.

Sometimes, when I am feeling brave, I try to embrace the pain and quite literally, my barf bucket.
(Please have mercy and refrain from suggesting foods to eat or medications that might help. First of all, even the smell of bread and apples is enough to make me sick. Also, I've had every anti-nausea medication known to man. K?)

Remember my post from New Year's about being humbled in 2010 and accepting God's will for our family?
Take it from me, Newly Self Proclaimed Wise Sage: publically inviting God to humble you is going to get you exactly what you are asking for.

I am darn lucky to be a mother. It is one of the greatest blessings of my existence. I wouldn't trade my kids for the world. I might trade you my hyperemesis gravidarum*, though.

Thank you for your prayers. I need them. My children need them though they are doing remarkably well considering I haven't held them, bathed them, fed them or played with them in a few weeks. Thank you to the two kindest Grandmothers in the universe who are not only caring for my children but for me right now.

I keep having the lyrics of that wise Rolling Stones song in my head:
"You can always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."

Here's to hoping.



*If you're not familiar, you're lucky. It's kinda like being poisoned by your own pregnancy hormones. It's relentless, it's crushing, it's disgusting, it's unlucky and the only thing that really helps is IV and time. The only person I know who can relate is my friend Dan who's been through chemotherapy. I do not say this to make light of the fight against cancer. I'm just one sick puppy.

stay away

we're all sick.

don't come to our blog.

you might catch it.

plus, you know that life/baseball analogy that says when something tricky and unexepected happens we call it "life throwing you a curveball?" i think that is crap, because in the course of a baseball game, depending on the pitcher, it is not out of the realm of possibilty to expect a few curveballs. in fact, if you're a good player, you slam those suckers outta the park; at least hit a double.

well, our current baseball analogy goes more like this: the hopkin family is playing an exciting game of baseball and a sledgehammer the size of a Mac truck comes descending out of the heavens and starts breaking up the playing field and players are running for their lives screaming.

curveballs? i wish we had a curve ball. what we have here is a freaking situation.

i don't mean to be cryptic and obnoxious.

someday i will be able to explain. for now, take cover and know that this blog will be experiencing a little bit of a game delay.

Project Janie - defining my own photog project

Have you heard of the Project 365?  I have bloggy friends the nation over committing to taking photos every day this year and posting it. Some started late and it's more like project 361, and one has said she's only willing to commit to one month and has Project 31. I think it's wonderful!

I have been shying away from the project. There are too many unknowns going on for our family in 2010. I don't want to set myself up for failure. So, Even though I love the idea of Project 365 , I am not going to do it in 2010, and will just continue with my once or twice a week photo ops. However, I am inspired to document something that has been going on in our household for the last 8 weeks or so.

Several nights a week, at least three, our Jane feins going to bed. She curls up under her covers, closes her sweet eyes, and we turn off the light and leave. A few moments later there is the click of her light switch, the unmistakable PING of her closet latch opening and a faint sound that could only be likened unto the rustling of petticoats.

I sneak in later, to do my midnight snooping as I am wont to do, and find her blinged out.  Tights, slips, dresses, high heels, or "church shoes" as she calls them, tiaras, etc. I don't know how she sleeps in this get up, or why she changes from her comfy jammies into itchy nylon and tulle, and goes right back to bed. I think it has something to do with wanting to wake up in the morning and be able to start the dress up fun right away, but there is no way to understand fully her thought process.

It completely slays me. We love it. We love her for it. And I am committing to take a picture every time she does it. I wish I'd been doing it all along, because I'd have at least 25 shots so far.

My first Project Janie Submission of 2010

houston, we have a problem

...and that problem is me. Apparently I am foolish enough to assume that if I remember to put the pens and markers away, like, in a drawer, little hands won't find them.

This chronicles two separate incidents this week. As a side note, our house was built last year. We are the first owners. Our kids are doing a dang fine job of breaking it in.

black fine tip sharpie incident:




and purple Crayola




I think he looks a little impressed with his handywork in this last picture.  Apparently we are not
on the same page with this. Or any page, as it happens...

whims

Recently I feel like I've been mentally hit in the head with a sledge hammer. Lots of stuff to ponder is a fun way of saying it.

Yesterday we acted on a whim and hit up the Boston Children's Museum. As you can see, the wonderful Daddy did all the heavy lifting, and I got to enjoy watching my sweet family play.

Bliss.

















Let's pause here and analyze this above picture a second. This is why dads can be so cool: He lifts baby with one arm, lets him make the shot while being ready to catch the ball in his other hand to keep flow of play going. A mom doesn't know to do that stuff. At least, this mom doesn't. I learn from Andrew how to play everytime I watch him.





Never one to shy away from a PSA, listen up Massachusetts residents: If you live in the area and want an annual membership that will get your whole family into the Boston Children's Museum and the Museum of Science for pennies, go to http://www.amse.org/ and go to the membership button.

This costs $35 a year. That's it. They send cute little laminated cards in the mail and voila! Your winter salvation. As a price point comparison, annual membership to MoS is $105 a person, family membership to Children's is $125. 

But from http://www.amse.org/, it pays for itself in one trip to the museum!  This is no scam. We did it last year and renewed this year. Ok. I'm done.

All you need is love