Musings of a Louisville St. Louisan

This blog was written on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 Three weeks ago, on New Year's Eve, I was at the doctor's office finding out that I had lost my baby girl, Ezraela Eaven.  I wrote about it in my blog and in closing I said, " I know from past experiences that his mercies are new every morning.  It’s not morning yet.  And I’m not even sure when it will be morning.  Probably not for a long time."  The days that have stretched on since then have been difficult.  And when I say difficult it is probably an understatement.  I'm not sure there is a word in the English language that capture the anguish I have felt.  They have been harder than when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2006 and when my grandma (her mom, who I was very close to) died while she was undergoing chemo.  They have been more agonizing than when I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis in 2007 and the dramatic life change that has followed.  I am not...

Last night, January 3, 2014, I said goodbye to my sweet baby girl, Ezraela Eaven.  Ezraela meaning “God is my help”, Eaven meaning “fair radiance”.  I only carried her in my belly (as my 2 ½ year old, Alexandria, would say) for 18 weeks, but to me, her mother, it might as well have been an eternity.    I remember the day I took the pregnancy test that told me she was there.  I remember the tears of joy that streamed down my face.  We kept the news of her quiet for quite some time because we were afraid that we would lose her.   My first visit to the nurse midwife was riddled with anticipation and anxiety.  I was afraid they would tell me the tests I took had been wrong, but because of spotting and cramping they did an ultrasound.  That day I truly fell in love with that little blob on the screen.  I was only 10 weeks along, but she was mine.   10 Week Ultrasound My second visit was more of ...

Soup, SOUP, soup.  If you are like me and have a chronic medical condition that requires you to be on a restricted diet (like interstitial cystitis , aka IC), this is the WORST time of year for you.  It is cold outside and all you want is a bowl of nice, warm soup.  You are at the mall doing your Christmas shopping and you get hungry.  You decide to make a trip to your local Panera.  Standing inside, you ask yourself what sounds good.  Soup .  Soup sounds good, but you sigh.  You can't have their soup.  Because it has onions, because it has pepper, because every body seems to think it is necessary to put tomatoes in their soup.  Or what about the infamous "spices", which could be any spice fr om cayenne pepper to basil.  Why, oh why, can't they just list out what spices they are using?  You want to cry, but you realize, it is just a bowl of soup, so in my case you go down to the Subway to get a $5.00 footlong because all y...

Zucchini is something I would love to be a big fan of.  I always pick some up when I am at Aldi.  However, it seems that every time I buy it there is a lovely place at the bottom of my crisping drawer that it sinks down to never to return again...until it becomes inedible.  Aldi sells it's zucchini in a three pack at ridiculously low prices.  At first I thought the three pack was extremely convenient so that vegetable didn't roll around and get lost in refrigerator nothingness, but I soon discovered that keeping it in the sealed container from the store seemed to make the produce get slimy sooner.  And there is nothing worse than slimy vegetables.  You may ask why didn't I use my zucchini?  The answer is quite simple:  I didn't know how to cook it.  Every time I took a gander at making cooked zucchini edible, it turned into a gross, slithering mess.  One time I tried to pass it off as fries, but my clever 2 1/2 year old daughter di...

Hi Baby This blog will go into some medical details about interstitial cystitis and pregnancy.  If you don't like TMI or are a little squeamish I want to give you fair warning.    Last time I got knocked up it took a whopping 2 and a half years.  We were actually one week from starting our adoption classes with the state of Kentucky when we got that lovely plus sign (or in our case with our Dollar Store pregnancy test two lines).  My husband and I knew that we were going to have another child at some point, however we did not realize how challenging our spirited little girl would be that we would want to wait so long before we tried for numero dos. When we finally got to a point where we could see a second little DoroJohn (that's our celebrity name) in our future we never thought in a million years that it would take a mere 2 months.  I had been prepared for the long haul.  You can imagine how surprised I was when I got that positive pregnan...