Georgia O’Keefe Museum is a no go

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Other than breakfast burritos, enchiladas, green chilies, Los Alamos/the Manhattan Project, and Pueblo art and culture, the first thing I think about when I think about New Mexico is the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. I studied 1.5 years of art history, and Georgia O’Keefe is one of the very few modern American artists that I actually liked. She was most famous for her New Mexican landscape and macro flower paintings. She is also, very likely, one of the most respected (and well paid) female artists of all time. And her macro flower paintings… well, they were very very zoomed in, as in, they actually look like vaginas. I love flowers. I also love and appreciate the natural beauty of vaginas. So, it was no surprise that I would like Georgia O’Keefe’s work.

Well, unfortunately because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all museum tickets must be purchased in advance, and when I checked two weeks ago for tickets, they were all sold out until the middle of June. So much for trying to support one of the most famous female artists of all time.

I can’t believe I’m going to New Mexico without seeing the Georgia O’Keefe Museum….

Getting on a plane after 15 months

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For the last four or five years, I was on planes at least every other month, if not every month. It was rare to go a quarter of the year without getting on a plane at all. Plane travel was just normal, whether it was for work, pleasure, or a combination of both. And I always looked forward to flying and the experience of being in an airport. Most people dread plane travel and airport time; but I always loved it. Flying always felt like it was giving me purpose. I’m GOING somewhere, I thought.

Well, the pandemic obliterated all my travel plans last year. My last time on a plane was in February 2020 for my then company’s annual kickoff in San Francisco, plus extra time with family and friends. The kickoff was fine; the friend time was enjoyable; the family time was pretty horrendous and frustrating all around. That’s how I remember my last trip I took that required plane travel.

So now, 15 months later, we’re booked to take a five-day weekend to New Mexico, beginning this Thursday, and I cannot believe I’m actually getting on a plane again! It will be interesting (or frustrating) to see how airports and plane staff are handling the pandemic precautions and cleaning, and a very new feeling to even be traveling for any reason to another state. New Mexico will be my 45th state; Chris has already been, but we’ll be seeing other parts he didn’t have a chance to his first time. I’m looking forward to the warm weather, the arts and culture, the outdoors, and the breakfast burritos and green chilies. Bart will also be excited that he can travel again, too; he’s been pretty bored collecting the occasional bits of dust on my dresser in the last 15 months.

When you’re cutting your nails every week

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There are a lot of “body maintenance” or “grooming” activities I absolutely hate doing: I dislike shaving. I hate the act of washing my hair. I really, really hate flossing (though I do it every single night because I know I have bad genes when it comes to dental health). Clipping nails is also extremely tedious; I’m especially terrible at filing my nails. Even after I think I’ve filed them very carefully, I always manage to get a nail snagged on some towel or piece of clothing within an hour or so after.

So when I started realizing that my nails were growing at a much faster rate in the last few weeks, I felt a bit torn. On the one hand, I recognize this is a really common (and for most women, pleasant) pregnancy side effect: the increase in hormones in your body results in faster hair and nail growth, and these are all positive signs for pregnancy. However, on the other hand, I felt annoyed: this means I will have to cut my nails more often, which I hate doing! The last time I cut my nails was literally a week and a half ago, and this past weekend, they were so long and annoying, especially while cooking. I got all kinds of gross food bits stuck under my nails, which looks really unattractive and dirty. Immediately, I knew I needed to cut them yet again. I usually never have to cut them this often, so I knew for a fact that the quick growth was due to pregnancy.

Vivid dreams during early pregnancy

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Surges in progesterone and estrogen, as well as the obvious HCG/pregnancy hormone, are to blame for pretty much every pregnancy symptom that exists, from moodiness, sore breasts, nausea, fatigue, dizziness, food aversions, etc. But what I wasn’t quite expecting while reading about pregnancy symptoms is that women also tend to experience more vivid dreams and nightmares as a result of being pregnant, particularly in the first and third trimesters. And this, in somehow and some way, can also be attributed to the surges in progesterone due to pregnancy.

Many women who had never really remembered their dreams prior to becoming pregnant report greater dream recall during pregnancy. They also say that there is an increase in nightmares that feel very, very real. Granted, I’ve always been a vivid dreamer who thinks her dreams are real as she’s experiencing them, but in the last few months, my dream recall has been relatively poor.

The dream I had last night was very much out of the normal range for me. I had a dream I was at the border of two countries… who the heck knows what countries. And we had an endless number of huge crates filled with tropical citrus. I was charged with illegally getting these citrus from one country to the next by smuggling them in and hiding them underneath some other legally recognized cargo. I was working with two other people, and we were mapping out the route we were going to take on the road, the excuses we’d make at the border check-point, what we’d show the border patrol agents, and approximately how much time this would take. It felt like a very high stress, high stakes endeavor, and the pressure was on.

Maybe in some ways, this does make sense for me to dream about from a pregnancy perspective because I have been experiencing cravings for grapefruit that I’ve never really gotten before. While I’ve always enjoyed grapefruit, it’s tasted even more delicious to me in the last couple weeks than ever before. I wonder what I will dream up next.

COVID vaccine, dose 2

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This morning, I went to CVS to get my second COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine. I was a little wary of getting it, especially after hearing that some people had really adverse reactions ranging from chills to muscle aches to even fever. Fever during the first trimester of your pregnancy can be pretty damaging to your baby; during this period, your embryo is growing and developing its brain and basic body structure, so it’s been said that a mother having a fever can actually result in brain damage to her unborn child. So based on this, any expectant mother would do whatever she could to avoid getting a fever.

I didn’t have any adverse reactions to the first dose, which sounded relatively normal based on what I’d heard; I just had soreness at the injection site. With this shot, it took about 4-5 hours for me to develop soreness where the shot was administered, but somehow at the end of the day, I still feel fine. I wonder if this is actually going to last. And this better not hurt my baby in any way.

Last vag pills, fingers crossed

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I couldn’t believe it. When the clinic called me last Wednesday afternoon with my final instructions upon “graduating,” they let me know that yesterday would be my very last day of Endometrin, the progesterone supplements I needed to take during the period preparing for my frozen embryo transfer through the 10th week of pregnancy. Endometrin are pills, but they are not the pills you are probably envisioning; they are not taken by mouth, but rather by vagina. You use an applicator and insert them into your vagina three times a day, once in the morning as soon as you wake up, once in the middle of the afternoon, and once before bed. And they are anything BUT clean: I’ve had to wear a panty liner every single day during this period, and when I have not… well, I’ve had quite a mess to clean up. And don’t even get me started on the “trail” that the pill leaves; it literally leaks all over the place, from the bed to the floor to the chairs I sit on. I’ve randomly found traces of vag pill all over the hallway floors!

But to be honest, I would take vaginal pills/Endometrin every single day and then some over taking progesterone in oil (PIO) shots, which are thick, painful, and administered on your butt with a longer-than-long needle. I am so grateful I have remained ignorant to the horror of that experience, which is what I honestly feared the most during the IVF process, but was made aware early on that the clinic would not be prescribing this for my protocol (or most of their other patients, for that matter).

It was almost bittersweet in some way, inserting my last vag pill yesterday evening before bed. It’s like this period of my IVF process is done, and fingers crossed, things will continue to go smoothly moving forward. Life is progressing; life inside of me is progressing. My pregnancy is progressing. I just need to keep my faith in this process going.

First OB appointment

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Given the fertility journey I have been on, every appointment I’ve had after learning I’ve been pregnant has been beyond nerve wracking. I have to try my best to fight off anxiety while going to all of these appointments, whether they’ve just been for blood draws to check my HCG level, or scans to check on the growth of the embryo and its heartbeat. I’ve also had to start seeing an endocrinologist to ensure my thyroid levels are within healthy range, and each visit there, they also take my weight and blood pressure. I’ve always had normal blood pressure, but at this first OB visit, which is strange to even call it that since prior to getting pregnant, I would usually just refer to my OB-GYN as my “gynecologist,” when the nurse took my blood pressure, I noticed that it was a little elevated. Great, I thought. I’m getting off to an awesome start with this visit.

Then, I undressed from the waist down as instructed and waited for my doctor of the last nine years to come in. And I felt nervous. What if the embryo isn’t growing? Or what if its heart beat can no longer be detected? These worries keep plaguing me each visit, and they’ve only gotten worse since Twin A’s heartbeat stopped.

I knew she was coming when I heard the clicking of her heels. She loves heels.

She opened the door with a huge grin on her face (yes, I could even see it with her mask on): “YVONNE!” She shouted in a sing-songy tone. “You’re PREGNANT!!!! CONGRATULATIONS!”

I smiled. “Yep. I”m excited… and absolutely terrified,” I responded, laughing. “Every visit, I’m scared I’m going to find out something bad.”

She reassured me that at this stage of pregnancy, now that we’re at week 10, the miscarriage risk was extremely low. “Now, you should really just focus on your health and the future,” she insisted.

I hope she’s right, I thought. I mean, based on the statistics, what she is says is true, but I cannot help but have some lingering doubt in the back of my mind. I cannot get too comfortable.

She proceeded to perform my very first transabdominal ultrasound; I couldn’t believe it. “We don’t have to do it vaginally?” I asked to be sure. She said that at this stage, we should be able to see clearly enough over the stomach (thank God; I’m so over having foreign objects stuck in my vagina all the time). So she pressed the wand over my stomach and we started looking at the outline of what is now, as of this week, transitioning from an embryo into a fetus. We saw the outside of the baby’s head, butt, hands, and feet. And she also measured the heart beat: 179 beats per minute, which is on track for this stage. And the little peanut is measuring at exactly 10 weeks. Thank goodness. A major sigh of relief came out.

She had me do some routine prenatal tests, including both blood and urine samples, and gave me a referral for a formal 12-week scan that would provide better imaging for nuchal translucency and growth at the hospital in two weeks. I will see her again in five weeks.

I just need to get through these weeks and not worry about the growth and progression. I’m not used to not having weekly scans, and I just need to trust in the process. I need to trust in the process. I am going to get through this. My baby is going to get through this, too, and be healthy and happy. Please, please.

Zoom chat with our newly widowed friend

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I was surprised to get a message from Maria, Raj’s wife, yesterday morning, asking if we’d be free to catch up over a video chat this week. Obviously, we’d been wanting to chat with her since we found out about Raj’s passing, but we figured she was overwhelmed with being a new mom and all the new responsibilities around that, not to mention grieving her husband, and so we just let her know we’d be free to chat whenever she was ready.

We ended up chatting with her this evening, and I just couldn’t help but get emotional. I don’t think it takes any difficult guessing to figure out that life has been really hard for her since he got sick and died so suddenly. And it’s only been made worse by the fact that no one, not the doctors or anyone at the hospital, have any idea what brought on these seizures out of nowhere… they know nothing until this day. One by one, his organs just started shutting down, and the end finally came. And he was hospitalized just days after bringing their baby home.

Maria expressed a lot of confusion and anger at the world that something like this could happen to Raj, and it was easy to understand. “Why Raj? Why him?” she said through tears. “He’s such a good person… Why did he have to get taken away, and like this?”

The world isn’t a fair place. It’s no wonder I get angry at life and the world so often; it’s when things like this happen. Maria has been so strong, partly because she has no choice given she’s responsible for an entirely new human being now. I just can’t believe how strong and fierce she’s been; it was so admirable to see.

It just felt so strange, though, to be on that Zoom chat with just her. It’s almost like I still don’t believe Raj is gone, like all this is some awful joke being played on us, and that out nowhere any second, he will pop into the Zoom frame and say hi to us. I can’t believe she’s actually a “widow” now. That is just too strange to me to think about. My heart just hurts.

Apartment viewing

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Over the weekend, we spent some time viewing new apartment buildings across Manhattan. And honestly, I felt a little overwhelmed seeing them. A lot of interesting and eclectic buildings have been built in New York in the last five to ten years, and the newer they are, the more insane they become when it comes to amenities and hotel-like finishes. Bowling alleys? Golf simulators? “Room service” “catered” by local restaurants? Laundry and housekeeping services on demand? I cannot believe how extensive some of these amenities can get depending on the building. In addition, some of the views at these buildings seem too expensive to be places I’d actually live: one of the buildings we viewed on the east side in the 30s had full, sweeping views not only of downtown Manhattan, but also water views of the East River and Long Island City.

My expectations for apartment buildings has definitely increased since moving into our current building, where we’ve lived for nearly four years now. But at the end of the day, amenities like spas and saunas and bowling alleys are just far too excessive for me. How often would I realistically use them? Chris uses our pool every weekday, and I use our gym every weekday. We love having a package room where our packages are guaranteed to arrive safely. Outside of that, these other things just seem too frou-frou for me to get excited about or be tempted by.

A celebration of life for our friend

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This afternoon in the suburb of Folsom, family and friends gathered at a beautiful winery to celebrate the life of our dear friend Raj. For those of us who are not local, a live stream of the event was provided on YouTube, so Chris and I tuned in to participate from home. As we can imagine would have been what Raj wanted, this was no somber affair; the food and wine overfloweth, and the family requested guests to not wear funeral attire and instead to wear business casual.

One after another, we heard friends and family members of Raj talk about memories they had with him. All of them were relatable, and none were surprising given the big heart that Raj had. Some were actually pretty funny (I had no idea he converted Maria’s parents into wine lovers. These are people who barely even knew what wine was before!). Even his manager and the head of his team came to share thoughts and memories of their colleague and friend, a side that we never got to see of Raj since we never worked professionally with him.

The tear jerker moment for me was seeing his dad speak. Given the timing, it was unlikely he got to see Raj this year before his son’s untimely death given he was stuck in Nepal, and it just broke my heart to see how strong he was being. Raj was so close to his parents; he frequently called his dad his best friend. And regardless of being in a totally different time zone, he called his dad every single day, even if it was just to talk for five minutes. He was an open book to his dad. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and anguish his parents must have felt upon learning their eldest son had suddenly passed. It must have felt like death for themselves.