Setbacks & Loss: Anivair Edition

I don't know what I can say that wasn't already said better, but I'll try to cover my part of this.

When your wife tells you she's pregnant, the last thing you expect is for her to come out of a Shell Station bathroom ten hours from home saying she's bleeding. It turns you inside out.

But I dealt with it. I made her call the OB, because I knew she couldn't think about it. I took her to the hospital and tried to keep her in good spirits. Some of that felt like a betrayal. Our omens in ritual had not been great, won't lie. I thought they were cautioning us against talking to people about it.

Which is a lie. I thought they were telling us that we weren't going to have a baby. But I didn't want to believe that. I second guessed my own divination, which probably happens a lot.

A lot of people will say that the waiting is the worst part. It wasn't. The worst part was watching them wheel my wife away. Waiting was just me eating seaweed salad. Me reading. Me drinking complimentary hot cocoa. Big deal. Traci was the one going into surgery.

I know that most people won't care about this, but the recovery has also been hell on our diets. We ate crap for almost 2 weeks and getting back on the bandwagon is hard (though the crap I've been feeling like for the last week is helping there).

Mostly I just want to put this past us and get our lives back. If nothing else it taught us that we both really want to have a baby. A lot. And we'll keep posting here because this journey is not over by a long shot.

Setbacks & Loss

So, I'm not going to mince words, it has been a rough month. I have debated posting this or not, to delete the previous entries or not. And I have come to the decision that we wanted this blog to be about our journey. The good, the bad, the whole process.

So, post this I will. Though, it is our intent not to publish this blog until we are through the first trimester of a pregnancy and ready to share it with the world. So, by the time the public has a chance to read this, some time will thankfully have passed.

The condensed version of the story is that we lost the baby. For those that are not interested in the details, feel free to skip below the purple text. (I do sort of miss having cut tags in livejournal for this reason.)

I'm just gonna throw this all out there. Warning, this is a little TMI.

Almost from the beginning of the pregnancy, I was very ill. Nauseous 24/7 and losing weight fast. we decided to still try to go on our honeymoon to New Orleans, and about 10 hours into the drive, I had terrible cramping and I started bleeding a little. So, in Decatur Alabama, we spent almost 4 hours in the ER there. They sent us home and put me on bed rest...giving me a shot that would go on to compound the chronic constipation I was already suffering from. I was told that these things happen and it looks like things were still alright, but if I wanted to keep the baby I needed to stay off my feet.

For the next week, I was lying in bed, wracked with pain caused by the nausea and constipation the ER shot gave me. But I felt it was what I had to do to keep the baby. So I went to my first ob appointment, where they also did bloodwork and ultrasounds (u/s). The embryo was really small on the u/s, but they guessed we just misjudged my conception date. I had to wait two more days to get the bloodwork back and they said my hcg levels looked normal and my body was reacting well to the pregnancy.

So I'd go back in another week to do it all over again and make sure things were progressing alright. Another agonizing week passed with me being really ill and terribly anxious as to the future of the pregnancy.

So I went in again, having been struggling to eat more than a few spoons of yogurt and a couple of crackers for meals. So, I went in, Wednesday Sept 28th, and though my body was doing a great job of getting ready, the embryo had not grown in three weeks and was not viable at this stage. I was informed that the next morning (Thursday Sept 29th) for my own health, I needed to have a d&c procedure to remove the embryo.

I went from 3pm, anxiously hoping to hear a fetal heartbeat, to 9am...prepping in an O.R. for them to remove it.

Our lives just changed so fast.

While I had mentally prepared for this as an option, I must admit, it is a pretty crushing blow. We managed to tell a few close friends and family and they helped us through this. But all told, I'm still reeling from the loss. Frankly, I was pretty numb all weekend and it wasn't until yesterday that I really had the chance to let it sink in.

I suppose this gives me an opportunity to start fresh and try to be conscious about my pre-pregnancy health for a few months before trying again.

I hope that this situation will be an example of how common this kind of situation is. And maybe by sharing this, it will give someone hope after loss like this.

Be well.

Eating: Anivair Edition

I spent a long time today researching Morning Sickness (which is a bullshit name). I never thought I’d do this much research on this particular topic. In fact, I just always assumed that when a woman got pregnant she would throw up in the morning for a few days and then somehow the rest happens by magic. I blame movies.

What I now know is that this sickness can happen anytime and that sometimes the cure (like crackers or fruit) can make it worse in a lot of ways. I’m going to try to get Traci eating some good fats. Her diet will, ideally, be high fat, low to moderate carb and moderate protein. Everything I’ve read says that should help.

EDIT: Dinner panned out in that way. What does that look like? We hit Chipotle. She had a burrito bowl (the rice is not technically paleo, but it can help settle the stomach and I can think of worse things to eat). She had barbacoa with sour cream (not only a good source of fat, but our Chipotle uses local pastured cream … how great is that?) and a healthy dose of guacamole. I can live with that. Did it help? Hard to say, since we had company over and nobody knows we’re expecting yet, so she had to be quiet about it, but we’ll see tomorrow.

Eating: the Challenge

Woke up feeling exhausted, but not too nauseous. Got up early because of our barking puppy. Got motivated, showered dressed and took a little time this morning to start my day slowly. And while I was tired as all get-out, I told Joe yesterday, I will gladly feel tired and nauseous if we get a great baby in the end.

So I headed to work, after having some strawberries and my supplements. That’s when the nausea started to settle in. I had some grapes, to try and calm my stomach but it didn’t do much. Then I grabbed my lunch which was delicious yesterday and now makes me queasy just looking at it. I forced several forks of it in before giving up. the last couple of days, I feel like I have been forcing food in my mouth just to make sure I’m eating something, but it is all making me feel sick.

I went home after work and passed out on the couch. Seems like I’m doing that a lot these days.the nap seemed to help my mood and I was able to put down dinner.

Workout Day: Anivair Edition

The MovNat workout with a newly pregnant wife was interesting. I am torn at this stage between being upset when certain exercises make her feel sick and being sympathetic because my wife is sick. I guess I’ll get used to it. She was still a champ and let me throw rocks at her.

Lunch was good, but I don’t know what Traci is talking about regarding her appetite. I recall her putting down a 3 egg omelet, home fries, and a fruit cup. I’d say she’s doing fine. The nausea has been making the eating schedule a bit weird, though. Just today we had to put two meals off by about an hour to make sure the stomach didn’t get too bad.

That’s all she wrote.

Workout day

Today has been rough. While I've had minimal nausea previously, today is killer.


We got up around 9 A.M. and went to the metropark to do our primal movnat-ish workout. I felt fine getting up, starting my day with some water before heading out.


Jumping and jogging pretty much immediately made me nauseous. I completed the workout, which was killer. We did bear crawls, plank walks and rock tosses. I want to keep working out and keeping up the weightloss we started before conception, but it will definitely need modified.


So, we came home, showered and met some friends for lunch. While I ate what I could, my appetite was certainly decreased. After lunch, we came home and I laid down to watch a movie. Before I knew it, I was asleep, and then awake, then asleep. I tossed and turned around on the couch, feeling pretty vile. Joe went and got me an ice cube to help make me feel less nauseous. It helped for a little while. He is looking into paleo alternatives for nausea cures.


We are officially twenty-four hours into doctor confirmed pregnancy and it’s killing us not to tell everyone. I keep almost slipping when talking about plans for our delayed honeymoon next week. What funny timing! New Orleans and seven weeks pregnant! This will be an interesting time!

Holy Crap: Anivair Edition

Holy crap.

No seriously. Holy crap.

I was super excited when the home test said pregnant. I was even more excited when the doctor confirmed it. I want to say that I knew ahead of time, but really, I “hoped”. I felt like, as a pagan, we should know stuff like this, shouldn’t we? And maybe we did, but we’re both too busy second guessing ourselves to be sure, so what good does that do?

I “felt” like she was pregnant before the test. But it’s hard to say if i was right or hopeful. We did a ritual at home on Tuesday and topok some omens. At first I thought they might be bad: one was about deception and I was afraid it was a sign that we were kidding ourselves, but it didn’t feel that way. Just as I was about to finish the flame of Iris (our Gatekeeper) made a series of sizzling noises and I thought it meant I should draw one more. That one was the God Head: the idea that you need to stay calm and focused and in the moment. Okay. So maybe they were telling us to chill out. I can live with that. But I didn’t do much chilling out after the news from the Doctor. We just spent the rest of the day talkintg about the plans we need to make.

Going through a pregnancy that is as natural as possible, while living paleo as modern pagans makes this a pregnancy and a process very much worth documenting, so I’m looking forward to sharing thoughts here.

Holy crap - Traci

A doctor's appointment confirmed what the HPT told us Sunday. I am pregnant. the nurse at my doc's office came in and said "very positive". They weren't sure if they should be excited or not, but I told them Joe and I were trying and were thrilled about the news. That seemed to come as a relief to the nurse and doc. Who apparently "never know how to approach the 'you're positive'" news.

So after a couple of very nervous days and a lot of praying and worry, Joe and I are going to have a baby!!!

I am, obviously thrilled, but have been rather apprehensive about the whole thing, worried that I was seeing signs that weren't there. But, the doctor said that as far as she can tell, I’m around six weeks pregnant. While I had a home pregnancy test to prepare me, it was crazy exciting to get the thumbs up from the doctor.

That said, Joe and I wanted to start a blog about being pregnant, paleo and interested in trying to have as natural a pregnancy as possible. We don't want to tell anyone until the first trimester is over, but we are frankly, super excited and ready to start documenting this process!