Love, luck and blight.

My sister called a few days ago, asking all kinds of questions about how I'd felt and what happened when I was pregnant, when I asked if she was pregnant. There was total silence on the other end of the phone. I was so happy for her. Unfortunately, just a few days can change everything. She is in the throes of a miscarriage now. Her gestational sac was empty, something they also call a blighted ovum. Interesting choice of words. Blight. It's a much larger word than the object it describes. Her pregnancy hormones are falling and she now has to take Plan B or have a D&C to flush her uterus. She has chosen Plan B.

I have no idea how to describe how awful I feel for her. During Christmas, she held Evelyn and cried because she said she didn't know when she'd be able to have a baby herself. There was no end in sight - her husband hadn't been employed in more than two years, they had student loans to pay and a mortgage and she was trapped in a job she hated because she was carrying everything financially and had been for two years.

Then, like magic, things began to come together over the last six weeks. Her husband got a job, which allowed them to feel comfortable starting a family. She discovered she was pregnant, got a new job and quit her old one. Then the part that meant the most to her was taken away.

I know miscarriages are very common in early pregnancy and that she will probably go on to have a healthy pregnancy. And if she was only five or six weeks into the pregnancy, but still. It represented a lot to her and now it's gone. And it sucks.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I totally forgot how much this part of motherhood sucks. Our daughter just got tooth #2. With it apparently comes a remarkable desire not to sleep. It's not only pain (only from the shrieking in there, it's probably partially pain) - it's also that switch that went off in her head that prompted her to wake me at 3 a.m. to have a three-hour long attempt at a discussion. Sadly, I haven't slept since.

What's worse for me, though, is the guilt. Yeah, I really can't do anything than give Tylenol to make the tooth feel better. But, the muscles in my back are aching, burning and just generally not in the right places. I had to hand her off to my husband for a few minutes. My husband, lucky man, doesn't have the same visceral reaction I do to my daughter's crying. I want to find what's causing it and obliterate it. He calmly puts on some muting headphones (he can hear her, but it's not as piercing) and carries her around until she's done crying and ready to sleep. Unfortunately for me, she cries a lot more with him.

So, while I'm out here feeling miserable, guilty, exhausted, frustrated and sore, I'm also treated to her shrieking, something I know I could alleviate just by walking in there and taking her from my husband. Seriously, I pick her up and it's like someone hit the off switch. God, I hate this. It's even worse knowing Ragsy is probably laying in bed with his hands clamped over his ears.

I know I should let the two of them figure it out. After all, it's not like I left her all alone. Someone who loves her is carrying her and quietly talking to her. Ugh. How sad is it that I'm trying to rationalize taking a much-needed break to avoid screaming myself and scaring the daylights out of a baby and setting a stellar example for my son? Oh, well. I hope she stops crying soon. I'm tired, sore, have an incredibly bad headache and I think my blood pressure is probably sky high by now.

Long time, no write.

It's not that nothing interesting has happened to me. It has. I just forget what it was by the time I go to make a blog post, so I haven't written in a long, long time. But, since I'm rapidly forgetting how to string two sentences together, I thought I'd write.

Not much is going on. Like I said, I forgot all the interesting stuff than happened to me. At the moment, the worst thing that's happened this week is that Ragsy's been a bit out of sorts and there's been a tuition hike at preschool & daycare. Fantabulous. I love having children, but they're so freaking expensive.

The best thing that has happened this week is that I was asked to serve as an expert on healthcare reform for two magazines who found a white paper I wrote for my company on managing retiree healthcare costs. But this is a mixed bag. I'm still waiting for people to realize that I'm not an expert. I'm just some chump who read all 2500 pages of the healthcare reform bill and was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to retain some of it. Oh, well. At least I get the credit for these.

Other than that, I'm still completely sleep deprived and feel a slight malaise (that only the genius possess and the insane lament). You know how you've achieved one goal, then you're in between goals? Yeah - that's about where I am. Both Adit and I are pretty sure we're done having children, so we're both struggling with ideas on what we do now. Of course - raise the kids. But what else? We'd both like to be rich. Wouldn't everyone? But how do you do that? And is what we would have to do something we'd be willing or even interested in doing? And if we decide not to do that, then what?

Ugh, anyway. So tired. Too bad Evelyn woke up three times last night. I was up way too frequently for my well being. Thank goodness she's begun to eat some solids. She still eats every hour and a half during the day (even with a meal in the middle of the day and the evening), but she's finally accepting something that's not me. Cereal of any sort really hurts her stomach, but the fruits & veggies are finally starting to have some appeal. I swear, by the time she's actually eating solids reliably, she'll be on finger foods. Not that that's a bad thing. So far when she does eat solids, she eats what we do anyway, so she's usually a cheap date.