BIRTH STORY

I was just. So. Pregnant. I had fantasized about the magic of pregnancy for four years — imagined how cute I would look in maternity clothes, how much attention I would receive, how I would glow.

Reality couldn’t even begin to live up to my daydreams. I started to swell sometime in the late second trimester; my feet and legs were twice their normal size. I bought a new, bigger, pair of shoes. Then I had to buy another new pair, another size up. My maternity clothes stopped fitting; my belly hung out of the bottom of shirts, and the pants were too tight. My wedding ring stopped fitting. In all I gained 65 pounds.

I still cringe when I look at this picture.

I was in pain and discomfort every way there was to be in pain and discomfort. My swollen feet felt tight and sore; my left heel was numb. My back hurt and was covered with acne, my breasts ached, and I had a strange stabbing rib pain. I couldn’t sleep. I got hemorrhoids. I was sweating like a professional athlete; I craved Coca-Cola like a junkie. I was stressed out, over it, exhausted. I missed alcohol and running and high heels and deli meat. I began to look with envy at girls I used to be like: fit, free, fun. I was Jabba the Hutt on the sofa, unable to summon the energy to shave my legs, let alone have sex with my husband. Oh the irony.

My due date came and went. One day past; two. A week. I kept slogging in to work. Coworkers looked at me with surprise, then pity: “You’re still here?!”

I went in for my 41-week OB appointment on a Friday, and blessedly, my blood pressure had finally elevated to a level high enough to cause concern. I was strapped to a monitor undergoing a non-stress test when my OB walked in and said, “You have preeclampsia; you’re going to the hospital today to have a baby.”

Philip and I looked at each other with excitement and terror. This is it! As desperately as I didn’t want to be induced, I was flooded with relief. No more pregnancy misery. Time to finally meet our daughter!

I went back into work to finish tying up loose ends; Philip came home and cleaned the house. We cooked a nice dinner, finished packing the hospital bag. I took a shower and blow-dried my hair. It was surreal.

Selfie in the hospital elevator

The maternity ward of the hospital was quiet when we arrived at 11 p.m. In the labor and delivery room, the nurse got right to work and quickly began rubbing me the wrong way. She told me to remove all my clothes and put on the hospital gown. “Even my underwear?” I asked.

She scoffed. “Did you get pregnant with your underwear on?” she retorted in her smoker’s voice. She fumbled with the IV, having to place it twice. She thought she had started the Pitocin two times but actually hadn’t. She struggled to make notes on the computer (“they make these things for the kids”) and kept muttering to herself the whole time she was prepping me for the induction. Nothing about her made me feel calm or reassured.

It was a very long night. Being pumped full of fluid, I had to use the toilet every two hours, which meant having to call the awful nurse to unhook me from the machine every time. I tossed and turned, making the baby’s heart-rate monitor slip out of place, which meant the awful nurse had to keep coming in to readjust it. The straps around my belly were itchy, and I was anxious.

At 7 a.m. a new nurse started her shift, and she was WONDERFUL — totally chill and competent. Her name was even Alyssa, my sister’s name, so it felt meant to be. She began to check my dilation (3 cm at that point) and pump up the Pitocin drip.

Some time in the morning I began to feel contractions, and they intensified quickly. They were coming every three minutes, and unlike my expectations, I was in constant pain. There was no rest/relief in between, only slightly less pain. I asked Philip to press firmly on my lower back, which helped some, but at one point both he and Alyssa had stepped out of the room, and I was breathing through the contractions alone. Lying helplessly on my side, staring at the wall and sucking in air as deeply as I could, I felt wave after wave of period cramps times a thousand. Strapped to several monitors and hooked up to an IV, I couldn’t walk around to assist with labor or use any of the yoga positions I had learned, not even cat and cow. This is insane, I thought. Why am I trying to be a hero? As soon as the nurse returned, I asked for the epidural.

Placing the epidural was uneventful, even though I was fearful and shaky. Soon a warm sensation began to spread over my legs, and I could feel my whole body relaxing. I quickly slipped off to the second greatest sleep of my life. (The first was after a transatlantic flight, when I was stuck at Heathrow for hours unable to get a hold of Philip, who was already in the U.K. Finally I ended up taking the world’s most expensive cab to our hotel and dropping my jet-lagged ass into the glorious white bedding of a Marriott Bed®.)

I slept for hours while Philip paid bills online and watched a Tigers game; thanks to a catheter, I didn’t even have to wake up to pee. When I awoke, I found out I had progressed significantly, dilating to 7 cm, with the baby at a -1 station. I commented to Philip that this seemed too easy — I had labored primarily in my sleep. The nurse had me shift to my side to help the baby drop even more, and we just waited for the green light to push.

Eventually I started to feel the contractions to some degree again, but I didn’t click the epidural button because I felt it would be helpful to have a sense of when the contractions were coming. At 5:40 p.m., I got the go-ahead to begin pushing. Everything was going so smoothly, I thought, I’m not going to have much of a birth story to tell!

When I started pushing, it was just Philip, the nurse and me in the room. Philip held one leg, and the nurse held the other. I was supposed to hold underneath both of my thighs, arch forward with head to chest, take the deepest breath I could, and bear down with all my might, like I was trying to evacuate the biggest turd in the universe. The nurse counted to 10, and I was basically holding my breath that whole time straining. I would do this three times in a row, then rest.

This carried on for a while; time began to feel fluid. The effort of pushing and breath-holding was tremendous — and kept intensifying. The first step was to get the baby past my pelvis. It required series after series of pushing. Just when I thought I couldn’t push any harder or feel any more exhausted, the next round of pushing took me to a deeper level of exertion and fatigue.

I was aware that I could somewhat lift my legs on my own; the epidural had worn off quite a bit. The OB was in and out of the room, but Nurse Alyssa promised to stay, even if the baby was born passed her shift, which would end at 7 p.m.; she felt confident the baby would be born by then.

At one point the OB started joking with Philip, and I snapped at them both to stop talking — I was not in any mood for jocularity! (Philip told me later that the OB even sculpted the baby’s hair into a mohawk when she crowned.) By the time the baby was past my pelvis, the OB had joined us for good. She drilled me like an NBA coach — telling me to push harder, longer, to go again. She was raising her voice and getting excited, telling me I was the best pusher she’d ever seen and that I was getting so close!

With every push I thought, This HAS to be the one; I simply CANNOT push one more time! But each time I finished my series of 10 counts and flopped backward onto the hospital bed, gasping and crying, the baby still wasn’t out. She had crowned, and it was like they say: a ring of fire. I was soaked in sweat in the most intense pain of my life; what was the epidural even doing?!

They asked me if I wanted a mirror, but I said no. Still, I could see a warped reflection of myself in the light tile overhead. I saw the dark hair on the baby’s head poking out, and it hit me with a force that I had no choice but to push her out! We were too far in to switch to a cesarean now. I never said, “I can’t,” but I thought it and felt it; I was overwhelmed with the impossibility of what I was trying to do. “Just vacuum her out!” I cried out desperately.

“I could,” said my OB, “but I’m not going to!”

Later I would liken the experience to the one other great physical achievement of my life — running a 15K race. Once you’ve begun, there is no choice but to finish; there is no turning around or going back — you have to just keep running forward, even though you’re completely out of gas and the finish line is still miles and miles away.

Finally, after an hour and 20 minutes of pushing, I hunkered down and pushed with every last ounce of strength. “Don’t stop — keep going, keep going!” the OB cried, and I did. I was completely out of breath, out of stamina, out of my mind; I had no idea who all was in the room or what they were saying or doing. Splayed out naked on the bed, I pushed like I didn’t care if this baby split my body in half.

And at 7 p.m. on the dot, out she popped. The room exploded — “What a BIG BABY!” everyone cried! I collapsed back on the bed awash in extraordinary relief. They immediately put her on my bare chest and I saw her face: She wasn’t crying; she looked confused, but she had chubby pink cheeks, a rosebud mouth and streaky red “angel kisses” on her eyelids.

I had pictured the moment a million times, how all the years of failed fertility treatments and disappointment and pain and gritty determination would finally culminate in this eruption of love and triumph, but all I could understand was that I was SO RELIEVED that she was out!

She didn’t stay on my chest long; the OB was having trouble delivering my placenta and needed me to focus. “Then Philip is going to take her skin to skin!” I said. He peeled off his shirt and held her little bare body under a blanket; he told me later she pooped all over him!

I laid on the bed shaking violently while the OB told me to push out my placenta. I tried, twice, but I was weak and completely out of it. Finally she pulled it out by hand and began stitching me up. I found out later I had a second-degree tear. I could feel the pulling pressure of the stitches, and I just couldn’t stop trembling. I was vaguely aware of the staff in the room hazarding guesses as to the baby’s weight; they were chomping at the bit to put her on the scale. I heard estimates of nine or 10 pounds, but I didn’t believe it — there was no way I had vaginally delivered a baby that large!

The nursing staff wanted to take the baby to the NICU to do a blood test, so Philip accompanied them. The room cleared out fast, and Alyssa said goodbye. I squeezed her hand and thanked her for staying by my side; I found out later she had to remain an extra two hours doing paperwork after the baby was delivered.

Before long I was alone with the recovery nurse, who was in and out and not very talkative. I asked her for several blankets; I was so cold and still shaking hard. I laid still under the piles of blankets and reveled in my relief. Elin Reese was born! She was safe and big and healthy. I had done it!

The nurse offered to bring me some snacks. I hadn’t eaten anything but one popsicle in 20 hours. I munched on some graham crackers and string cheese and drank tiny containers of apple juice and fruit punch. I asked her for more juice — I couldn’t drink enough.

I heard someone in the hall exclaim, “Eleven pounds, 11 ounces!”

“Are they talking about my baby?!” I asked the nurse in disbelief.

“I have no idea,” she said.

Someone came into the room and announced that Elin was in fact 11 pounds, 11 ounces. “Did you actually see the scale?” I asked.

The person hadn’t. I said I wouldn’t believe it until I had heard it from the horse’s mouth.

Soon Philip and the NICU nurses returned with Elin and confirmed it was true. I just couldn’t register it! I had figured she’d be big — Philip and I had both been almost nine pounds, and Elin was eight days overdue. I had brought three-month-size pajamas for her just in case the newborn ones didn’t fit. But almost 12 pounds?! That was insane! No one saw it coming. I had always measured right on schedule and didn’t have gestational diabetes; she had kept her size a secret from us all. Suddenly I felt like my relatively uneventful birth story had a unique twist: I had delivered the biggest baby I’d ever heard of among my friends!

They put Elin to my breast so she could start nursing. I had no idea what I was doing, but I liked having her so close. The NICU nurses told us we would have to supplement her with formula because her blood-sugar level was borderline and she was so big and would therefore need more sustenance than I could provide with the meager amount of colostrum my body was producing. We were upset — we never intended to use formula — but they were insistent, threatening that she might have seizures if we didn’t supplement. They even tried to take her off my breast to give her a bottle of formula. I relented and said we could give her some formula after I was done nursing.

After we fed her, we were transferred to the recovery room, where we had another wonderful nurse, Anita, for the first night. She asked me if I wanted Percocet or Motrin, and I said yes. She hooked me up with all kinds of goodness for my war zone of a crotch — disposable underwear, Depends-size sanitary pads, frozen diapers, witch hazel, Epifoam, a peri-bottle full of warm water. She brought in a breast pump so I could get as much colostrum out as possible, which we fed to Elin with a syringe. She helped my naked, swollen, wrecked body limp to the bathroom and measured my pee (she told me I had to urinate at least four ounces or I would have to get another catheter, which motivated me enough to eek out that exact amount).

When she would leave to care for other patients, I would feel panicked — here was this baby we had to keep alive, all by ourselves! What in the world were we supposed to do with it?!

We bumbled our way through breastfeeding and helplessly guessed at how much formula to chase it with. I met with two separate lactation consultants at the hospital. Philip reminded me to order meals from the cafeteria, and I devoured them. My sister- and brother-in-law brought me a Jimmy John’s no. 12 sandwich, which tasted like it had fallen from heaven. We quickly learned Elin had no interest in sleeping in her bassinet, so we took turns holding her through the night. Due to her large size, she was a legend in the hospital. Every staff person who came into our room said, “So THIS is the big baby!” I was delirious, exhausted, bloody and in serious pain, yet it might as well have been my wedding day — that’s how romantic and special and amazing it all felt.

We stayed a second night in the hospital and were discharged around 7 p.m. the following evening. We put Elin in pajamas, and it felt like the closing of a chapter to unwrap her from her hospital blanket for the final time: Now we turn the page to life at home. 

MY CURRENT REALITY

Our daughter, Elin, was born April 25, 2015. We ended up with two viable embryos, transferred one on July 30 (our nine-year wedding anniversary), and received the joyous news that the transfer was successful two weeks later. I wrote a blog entry about finding out all of our dreams were coming true, but I never posted it; the survivor's guilt was just too much. I didn't know how to share that I had been chosen for Team Motherhood when so many of my friends, virtual and otherwise, still hadn't.

Also, I had a really rough pregnancy. There were thankfully no medical complications, but I suffered from all kinds of pains and discomforts, from vomiting my way through the first 14 weeks to gaining 60+ pounds and swelling up like a balloon early on. I didn't enjoy the experience at all, which only compounded my guilt. I wanted to write about the challenges of pregnancy, but again felt that my readers who were still in the trenches would be offended and hurt by me complaining about something they longed for with such aching intensity.

Now, I find myself again struggling ... this time with parenthood. Elin is five weeks old, and while she's a healthy, growing baby, I am crying nearly every day over the challenges of caring for her. Getting her to sleep at night is a battle, especially when Philip and I are so sleep-deprived and my body is still healing from the birth. She often cries for hours in the evening, driving us to the brink of insanity as we run out of soothing measures to try. And acclimating to this new infant-centric life has been a major adjustment. Philip and I were married nine years before she joined our family, so we were very set in our ways, used to having the freedom to do as we pleased. Having to sacrifice our former priorities, including our physical and emotional intimacy with each other, has led to more than a few ugly arguments.

But by far breastfeeding has been the biggest hurdle. At first Elin couldn't latch effectively thanks to her "tongue-tie" condition; then she completely refused the left side. Now, with a diagnosis of reflux, we're dealing with her crying at my breast, choking, hunching and often projectile vomiting. I've seen three different lactation consultants and still feel like I'm floundering. Nursing is the most basic, natural, and important task I have as a mother, and I can't seem to get it down.

Of course, I'm constantly asking Dr. Google for advice, which only yields trite, useless tips (and often conflicting: Aim for shorter, more frequent feeds! Make sure she drains both breasts at a feeding!) and confidence-deflating photos of women looking tenderly down at their peacefully nursing newborns. I'm constantly bombarded with the romanticized idea that breastfeeding is supposed to be this intimate bonding experience that baby and I will both enjoy. My baby is supposed to find comfort, security and pleasure at my bosom, and instead, she's screaming her head off in pain and frustration.

Still, I have to persevere, because she has to eat. So we fight our way through feedings every two hours, which isolates me endlessly in the house. I'm fearful to go out because I don't want to have a breastfeeding battle in public, and if people come over, I hide out in the bedroom to nurse, every muscle tense, praying to God she doesn't cry and give away my ineptitude. My muscles ache from the stress and effort of it all.

And then there are the times when I totally lose my patience with her, cursing out loud, being too rough, shoving my nipple into her mouth while she shrieks, which later makes me feel like a monster.

It all leaves me feeling like a failure, and it makes me so sad and brokenhearted. Once again, I feel like my body is failing me. Infertility was hard, pregnancy was hard, and now motherhood is hard. Am I just one of those people who will never be satisfied, who looks at the downside of everything? And the deeper, darker questions ... Was I never meant to be a mother in the first place? Were my infertility and subsequent unpleasant pregnancy signs that I wasn't cut out for this? Did I "play God" by doing IVF and conceiving "unnaturally," and now I'm left with a child that I don't have the ability to care for?

I've found that I do need an outlet for these feelings, as hard as they may be to read for someone still longing for a child. I want to be able to verbally process the victories and the defeats. I understand if anyone no longer wants to follow along. But I hope to visit this space more regularly to document these days, my current reality - totally in love with this child yet bumbling and weeping my way through her first weeks of life.

THE NIGHT BEFORE

I work till 7 the night before the transfer, which is scheduled to take place on our nine-year wedding anniversary. I don’t plan to stay that late, but that’s what happens. Philip’s been working late basically every night, so I still beat him home. He’s just had a stressful conversation over the phone with his mom. Between that and work confrontations, he is totally out of emotional gas. But I don’t know any of that, and we do the nightly progesterone shot.

After, we talk about our plan for the evening, for the next day. I have two acupuncture appointments scheduled for FET day: one immediately before and one immediately after the transfer. “Two acupuncture treatments, huh?” Philip says. “Doesn’t that seem excessive?”

I bristle, answer probably too defensively. “No. I told you about the studies that have been done, that show acupuncture makes the most difference when it’s done both before and after—”

“Yeah, you told me,” he interrupts. So that’s when it starts, roughly speaking.

We walk out to the car to go to Target to buy me some fun socks for the procedure. This is a genius idea Philip had days ago to mark the significance of the day and give me a small treat, something to smile about.

Philip heads for the passenger seat, which irks me. I, with my sore ass, have to drive apparently.

He tells me he’s made an appointment to have my car serviced the day following the FET, so we have to figure out when to go drop it off. We could take it over after the transfer, or after our anniversary dinner, or early the next morning before work. None of these seem like agreeable options to me.

“Remember I want to plant roses after the transfer?” I say with strained politeness. This is a genius idea I had several days ago, to commemorate both our anniversary and the seed that would hopefully begin to grow in me.

His face hardens. “Yes, I remember. But we’ve already let the car go too long, and I don’t want to drive it all the way to the beach this weekend without it being serviced first.”

From there, the conversation gets more and more heated, and I am becoming manic, convinced he doesn’t care about my meaningful, romantic rose-planting vision — certain the car and work and everything else is more important to him than all the things I have been prioritizing: perfect Zen calmness, emotional intimacy as a couple, and absolute physical health, to make this body of mine a ready and waiting vessel.

In the parking lot of Target, I whip the car around. “I don’t want to buy these socks anymore!” I wail.

“Stop driving like a crazy person!” Philip snaps.

“This was supposed to be a special thing, and now it’s RUINED,” I howl. “We have spent so much money, and effort, and time, on this, and now here we are — FUCKING it all up with stress and fighting!”

A beat. My foot is on the brake, but we’re not in a parking spot. My heart is racing.

“Come on,” Philip says after a moment. “Park. I’ll figure out the timing of getting the car serviced.”

So I do, and we go inside. But I am still completely raging in my mind. I cannot believe he has sabotaged the incredible bonding experience of buying these socks. We stare at the sock selection glumly, and I grab the first cute pair I see: hedgehogs.

We go to pick up some Advil for him, and I make the mistake of looking at his face as we walk to the register. It is the face of a victim: sour mouth, dead eyes, defeated by his lunatic wife. And again a surge of fury courses through my bloodstream. I toss the socks aside, on a display of lotions or candles or something, in a passive-aggressive move that he totally misses.

When we get to the register, the cashier takes the Advil and says, “Is that it?”

I say “yes,” and Philip whips around and says to me, “What?! Where are the socks?”

“I set them down,” I say like a child. “I don’t want them to trigger this horrible memory.”

Completely exasperated, he forces me back to get the socks. “Where are they?” he demands. I point and mumble. He grabs them and barks, “Go sit in the car.”

“Gladly!” I say with Hollywood drama. I go sit in the passenger seat. I am so miserable I can’t even think straight. All my efforts to stay calm, all of my lofty sock-buying dreams, dashed.

We go to Tijiana Flats for some dinner. By now it must be almost 10 at night. We are hangry, and the wait is long. Fucking Taco Tuesday. We sit in tense silence. Once the food comes, we try to eat, but the site of my injection is throbbing, and I am still so upset and disappointed. Tears start to noiselessly stream down my cheeks as I take pitiful bites of my chicken flautas.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Philip says. “Stop crying.”

“I can’t help it,” I say, which is true. I have lost all control over my mind and emotions.

He rises from the table in a huff to get some takeout boxes. We ride home in silence, and somehow, in the comfort of our living room with some food in our stomachs, the fight fizzles out. We’ve both surrendered.

My mom texts me to say I probably won’t be able to sleep very well, but not to beat myself up about it. She’s right. I’m wide awake at 5 a.m., but I just accept it. I lay looking up at the ceiling, as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. It’s our anniversary; it’s FET day, a day we’ve been working toward since I took my first birth-control pill on March 25 in preparation for our egg retrieval. The sun starts to come up, and I’m thankful for the newness of every morning.

UN-SHRIVELING ONE MEDITATION AT A TIME

One thing I really wanted to try as part of Operation Un-Shrivel My Heart was guided meditation and visualization. There are lots of these programs for sale on the Internets, but I wasn't ready to shell out $20 or more before I even knew if I could sit still for that long.

Finally, I found a free download from a San Diego-based fertility acupuncturist named Heidi Brockmyre. So one morning, a few days before the transfer, I sat down to try it for the first time. (First, I did a 15-minute relaxation yoga session using an app called Yoga Studio, which is $4 and worth every fucking penny.)

I swung open the doors of our guest room/would-be nursery, opened the blinds and spread a blanket over the bed for the cats. Then I sat down at the big white desk, lit a candle and pressed play.

I quickly found that I was comfortable with the exercise. It was like yoga for the mind. Her voice and tone sounded like a yoga instructor's, and the meditation even started out with a focus on the breathing. I just had to concentrate and follow the prompts.

Right away I got a message that I was in the right place. "You are safe. It is safe to open your heart to love," she intoned. Remember what I was saying in my last post about not feeling safe? About my heart being clenched shut? Yeah. Tears sprung to my eyes at how specifically the meditation spoke to me within minutes.

She walked me through the colors of the chakras as I visualized these radiating lights healing, opening, relaxing and protecting my womb, heart and mind. I could feel my heart rate slowing and my thoughts stop spinning.

She prompted me to send my future child a message, to consider what my baby needs to come to me. As I pondered this, trying to keep my mind receptive and open to a divine message, the cats started acting up. One of them began pawing at the closed closet door. I snapped my fingers at her. The the other started pawing. "Stop it!" I barked. Then one jumped up on the desk, weaving between my iPad and the lit candle. I tossed him onto the floor. Then the girl cat hopped up.

Angrily I jumped up from my seat and grabbed them both at once, pitching them into the hall and slamming the door. Resuming my meditation, I tried again to tap into the question about what my baby needs. I thought about how angry I was with my fur babies, who were just being curious cats, exploring a room that is normally off-limits and wondering what Mom was up to with this mannequin-level stillness and the candle and everything. And I felt like a shithead.

What my child needs, I thought, is the opposite of anger. So what is that? I had to look up antonyms at thesaurus.com: Contentment. Joy. Peace. Definitely not qualities I've been modeling over the last months and years ...

I thought about that Bible verse: The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Even thinking about the verse made me feel calmer, like I was a step closer to truth and goodness.

I looked up forbearance on dictionary.com: Patient enduring. I looked up endure: to suffer without yielding. Yield: to surrender, admit defeat, back down, give in, throw in the towel.

Could this stuff BE speaking to my situation any more directly?! I walked away from the experience feeling enlightened, centered, renewed. I felt grateful for my upbringing -- all the many verses and songs I was forced to learn as part of Sunday school and Bible class and youth group. I felt appreciative of spiritual mentors like Anne Lamott who showed that Eastern religious practices and Christianity aren't mutually exclusive (and can be, in fact, very complementary). And I felt thankful for technology -- for dictionary.com and the Bible app and Heidi Brockmyre's free download*.

I have done the same 15-minute guided meditation almost every day for more than a week, and every single time I do it, I hear a different message, a new word. Vessel: Remove the waste product from the silver, and a silversmith can produce a vessel. Healing: God heals the broken-hearted and bandages their wounds. Trust: Trust in God; wait in silence for him. Help: God is my refuge, strength, fortress and ever-present help. Love: God is love; anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. Forgiveness: Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you, just as we also forgive those who have wronged us. And more: I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You will protect me from trouble. Be still and know that I am God. And just today: The desert becomes a fertile field.

There is a lot of really weird, confusing, upsetting stuff in the Bible, but I've been overwhelmed with the words of hope and encouragement that I've stumbled across as I've made space for silence, let words and thoughts materialize and marinate, and done simple keyword searches. I have no idea if I'm doing my "devotions" right or reading things in context, but I just don't really think God cares. I'm coming to him as I am and doing my best and trying to hear from him. He must like that, I have to think.

The meditation thing hasn't saved me from all stress and conflict. Philip and I have fought. Confrontations at work have bent me all out of whack. I still wake up nearly every day with a nervous pit in my stomach. I get overwhelmed with fear that this transfer may not work, and what then? And I've felt like a failure every time I flounder at being fully zenned out.

But overall, it's helping. I feel better. I feel like I've got a few more tools in my mental tool belt as I face each day. My heart isn't a full size bigger, but at least it's not a total raisin anymore.

*The one complaint I have about the guided meditation is the way she pronounces abdomen: abdamum. Every time she says abdamum, like three or four times over the course of the 15 minutes, I cringe. And now I've done it enough to know when it's coming, so I also pre-cringe. But the editor self in me just has to suck it up and deal, because it's free, and because it's so beneficial.