Whoops!

Hello!

Well, I've certainly missed a lot of days of blogging. The baby has still not arrived, so I don't have that excuse. Mostly I've just been lazy, hah.

The weekend was nice though! On Saturday, we had friends over. Eric played video games with the husband, and I mostly chatted with the wife of the couple. It was nice to have a hang out time before the baby comes, since it'll be a little bit harder to manage all-day things with both of us present afterwards. Sunday was more relaxed. We went to church and then had lunch with my parents, and then I went shopping for a little bit with my mom and sister.

I think my big problem is a lack of topics to blog about! My days have become pretty boring. I basically limit myself to one to two productive things per day. The rest of the day is spent watching stuff online, playing video games, and reading.

I've been making slow but steady progress through Guards! Guards! It's an enjoyable book! I've also started reading a baby care book because Eric and I both realized a few weeks ago that neither of us have any idea what to DO with the baby once we bring it home. I've now educated myself on how to bathe the baby, roughly how often to feed it, and how to change its diapers. I need to finish up reading it soon so that I can give it to Eric to read through so that he'll be at least as prepared as I am. I don't want to fall into the trap of me being the baby "expert." I think this can happen a lot, partly because women are somehow expected to just "know" what to do with the baby, and, in my case, partly because I'm planning on staying home with the baby so I'll be her primary caretaker. But I don't want to tell Eric what to do/how to do it all the time! He needs to figure things out on his own and discover his own way of doing things. Otherwise, I don't see how we could be equal partners in child rearing if it's just me constantly telling him what to do. So! In conclusion, I want him to read all the same baby-preparation books as me so that we'll be working from the same base of knowledge. If we still have questions beyond what's in the book, then we'll do some research together to try to figure it out.

Okay, I think that's enough to get me back into the swing of things!

-Leah

Video games!

Hello!

Comment response: I love it when people ask questions about infertility and those experiences! There's definitely some lingering emotional trauma, but I like to talk through it and I like to feel like my experiences can help educate people. Like, for example, I feel like I've helped to teach my family a lot about the IVF process, and as a result they're better able to relate to and talk with people who are going through it. My mom was telling me about a younger friend of hers who was having trouble conceiving, and I was really proud of how my mom handled those conversations with her. I like to think that I helped, hah.

I mentioned in my first post that I've gotten sort of into video games since the first BEDA. I thought I'd talk about some of my favorites today.

I used to think that I didn't like video games, but I've since found out that was because I was playing THE WRONG KINDS. There are tons of different types, and I've learned that I like very chill games. I asked Eric how he would describe the genre of video games that I like, and he said simulation. Then we got into a long discussion about how there's probably a more specific classification, but I'll list some of my favorite games and why I like them anyway.

Minecraft
This is the first game that I was really able to put much time into. I started playing shortly after my husband and I started dating because it was one of his favorite games at the time. I think basically everyone knows what Minecraft is these days, but I'll explain anyway. It's sort of like virtual Legos in that you can build stuff. There are monsters, too, which can complicate things a bit. I don't actually enjoy the building part of Minecraft much. I prefer gathering materials to give to Eric so that he can build cool things. I also like organizing the food. You can make farms and things, which I find fun. Even the monster fighting is pretty fun because it's not usually too stressful, especially when you've upgraded weapons and armor.

Stardew Valley
My husband found this game fairly soon after it came out, and he thought I would like it. He bought it for me, and we found out HE WAS RIGHT. I love this game. The premise of the game is that your grandfather dies and leaves you his farm. You leave your big city cubicle job to go to the town and take possession of that farm. You clear the land that's been overrun, plant some crops, meet the townspeople, go fishing, do some mining, fight monsters, and collect resources. One of the things I like about this game is that it's very goal-oriented. You're given different tasks to complete as you go. It's also fun interacting with the other people in the town. You can talk with them and give gifts to gain friendship points with them, plus you learn more of their stories as you go along, which is fun. We currently own three copies of this game (one for my husband's PC, one for mine, and one for the Switch), and we're thinking of buying a fourth because they just came out with a phone version.

Animal Crossing (for Gamecube)
I recently got back into this game after trying it out fairly early on in my marriage (Eric is always suggesting games I might like, so I'll play a little to see if he's right). It's not quite as fun as Stardew, in my opinion, but it's a little bit simpler which can be nice. Apparently Wikipedia describes it as "social simulation." In this game, you move to a town and take out a mortgage on a house. You do jobs around town and collect resources to earn money to pay off your mortgage. Once you've paid it off, you take out another loan to expand your house and work to pay that off. You can also decorate your house with items to make it look nicer. There's a house judging system that you're trying to improve on by expanding your house and decorating it well. There are townsanimals that you interact with. You can do favors for them, and they'll give you gifts and money in return. It's a very cute game and pretty relaxed. There's a lot less to it than Stardew Valley, which I'm kind of liking right now but I do think I'll get bored of it more quickly. The really exciting thing is that Nintendo is releasing a new Animal Crossing for the Switch soon, so I'll get to experience a similar game in a new way!

Those are pretty much my three favorite games. I spent a pretty large amount of time playing my husband's favorite first person shooter, Team Fortress 2, with him before learning that it was making feel nauseous, hah. There are also some old favorites that I played growing up (Sim Theme Park, Red Alert, Barbie Team Gymnastics), but these three are the main games that I've been into lately. If you have any suggestions for other games, let me know!

-Leah

Raising a Child! Eeeep!

Hello!

First, responses to comments! I'm too lazy to actually respond in the comments, so I think my thing is officially just writing the response in my next blog post. Since I only have 1-2 regular readers, I think this works, hah.

I did feel like the medical staff were unnecessarily harsh with my chances of losing the pregnancy. I didn't want false hope, of course, but in the case of the nurse, I felt she was far too unwilling to accept that she might have just made a measurement error. And with the doctor, I think he could have phrased things better. Honestly though, the people I most hated dealing with at that time were the rest of the staff who acted like there had been a death before I'd even lost the pregnancy! I just felt like their attitude was a little...inappropriate? I'd always been pretty cheerful and friendly with the staff at the fertility clinic, so it just felt weird to interact with them so solemnly. I would have preferred for them to act more normal.

I find it interesting that in reproductive justice, the term spontaneous abortion is preferred. Among my friends in the infertility community who have suffered pregnancy losses, they actually hate the term spontaneous abortion, by and large. Most of them find it too clinical sounding for something that's a deeply upsetting experience for them. I've never heard anyone express that they felt the term "miscarriage" implied that they were carrying the baby wrong, though now that I break down the word, I can see how some might feel this way. I think chemical pregnancies and miscarriages are really difficult to handle when it comes to how we talk about them. Many people I know who have had them truly feel like they have lost babies, and they mourn for those babies. However, first trimester losses technically come before when most people would call them babies and it's further complicated by abortion debates, etc. I usually just try to adopt whatever language the person I'm talking to seems to prefer. To me, they're the one who is working through grief, so they get to decide how they would like to term things.

As far as support during infertility...it was kind of mixed. I lost a few real life friendships at the start of it. The friendships were probably coming to a close anyway, but they stopped talking to me shortly after I told them that we'd be seeking treatment and it was just very bad timing. But my family has been really supportive, even when they don't fully understand exactly what I'm going through. The online group I'm a part of was really key for me though. It was nice to have a group where people felt really similarly about things, and I liked offering support to them, too. Plus, it's very nice to be able to share our insight about the diagnosis and treatment of infertility issues. I think I tended not to fully trust my infertility doctors, largely because it can sometimes all feel like a cash grab, so on a practical level, it was nice to have people to compare notes with. Plus, we're able to provide emotional support on subjects that people without infertility might not understand as fully without explanation. Even now that I'm pregnant, I've moved onto online groups for mutual support for going through pregnancy after infertility. Us infertiles tend to be a bit more anxious about our pregnancies than the general population. Plus, there are certain issues that are more common in IVF pregnancies, like SCHs, for example. Even my baby's heart problem could be because of IVF (some studies have indicated that heart issues are more prevalent among IVF pregnancies). Then there are also still issues with medical care, in some cases. There's this whole idea of "too precious to lose." Basically, it's the idea that because IVF parents tend to have spent a lot to get pregnant (time, emotions, but especially money), they're likely to sue the pants off of their doctors if something happens and they lose the pregnancy. Because of that, certain people believe that doctors sometimes treat IVF pregnancies differently (more likely to suggest interventions, etc).

And finally...how will we raise our daughter? MAN. That's a tough one. For a long time, we tried not to think too hard about it because it seemed so far off. Now, we've got less time. We try not to get too ahead of ourselves since she'll still be a baby for a while, so it's not like we'll be teaching her life lessons for a bit. At first, we'll just be meeting basic needs. Then we'll be trying to teach her how to function as a human, physically speaking. But we've still had a few conversations about what to do once she's beyond that.

First, we plan on raising her really close to our families. We moved closer to them a little bit before I got pregnant, and she'll have a lot of cousins around (already 3 on my side with a 4th on the way and one on my husband's side). We're hoping she and her cousins will get along well. I was close to my extended family growing up, and it was always a lot of fun to get together with cousins. Being close with my grandparents and aunts/uncles also provided extra security for my life. I had adults other than my parents to talk to and to support me. I'd like the same thing for my daughter.

I plan to be a stay at home parent at least until she goes to school, and my husband works from home. We've talked about taking steps to insure we don't stifle her independence as she gets older by just being around all the time. We want her to learn to function on her own and to feel confident in her own abilities. We want to praise and correct her, of course, but we don't want her to constantly need feedback either, once she gets to an age that's appropriate for doing more on her own.

We plan to raise her "culturally Christian." Basically, we go to church, and we do plan to bring her with us. However, we want to be very open to questions. I was encouraged to ask questions growing up, but my husband really wasn't. If he questioned too much, then he got into trouble. We want her to feel free to ask questions and to explore other belief systems without being afraid that we'll punish her for it. We'll also be open with our own criticisms of the church, so that hopefully she'll learn from our example that it's okay to think critically about your belief system.

I think the most important thing to myself and my husband is that we're doing our best to raise a kind, compassionate, and confident person. I think one of my biggest challenges will be trying not to pass my anxieties onto her. I'm nervous of so many things, but I don't want to impose those worries onto her. I don't want to hover over her and fix everything for her, but I do want her to feel secure. I think striking that balance will be really challenging as she grows up. Luckily, my husband is a very good partner for me. He's a good balance to me, so I think we'll be a good parenting team. He has his own fears about possible shortcomings with his parenting, and hopefully I'll be able to help balance him out in those areas, too.

-Leah

Pregnancy after IVF

Hello!

Julia asked a question yesterday that sparked an idea for a future blog post, but I need to think about it longer to come up with a good outline. To answer your question, Julia, they just transferred one embryo! At my clinic, they had a list of "qualifications" essentially that made you eligible for transfer of more embryos. Basically, they don't want to have a lot of multiples pregnancies because twins/triplets/etc bring more risks to both the mother and the babies. Plus, on a more cynical note, fertility clinics submit stats every year, and it looks bad for them if they have too many multiples resulting from their treatment. In my case, I was ineligible for transfer of more than one embryo because I'm young and I'd never had a failed transfer before.

I suppose the natural progression of yesterday's post is to talk about the actual pregnancy part! Or at least what I've experienced so far.

So as I discussed last time, after the FET (frozen embryo transfer), they had me come in for beta blood draws, which show the amount of pregnancy hormone in your bloodstream. If the number doubles in 48 hours, they consider that a good sign of an ongoing pregnancy. However, as many as 1 in 4 pregnancies end in a first trimester miscarriage, so we weren't out of the woods yet. We nervously waited until our first ultrasound, which was to take place at 7 weeks of gestation. They can sometimes do ultrasounds a little bit earlier than that, but the advantage to waiting until 7 weeks is that there should definitely be a heartbeat by then if it's a viable pregnancy. If you go earlier than about 6 and a half weeks, then you're likely to see things like a fetal pole or a gestational sac, but the heartbeat might not yet be visible, which causes some major anxiety for people.

So we went in at 7 weeks, and it was somewhat disastrous. The heart was beating, but things were measuring too small, about five days behind. Since they knew exactly when they put the embryo in and how developed it was at that point, this wasn't a positive sign. My nurse told me that I could come back in a week, but I was likely to miscarry. The staff at the clinic proceeded to act as if there had been a death as they got me scheduled. It was not a good time. Thanks to some of my online friends (I got pretty enmeshed in an infertility support group online during our time trying, which I would recommend to anyone going through a tough medical situation), I knew that the nurse might have been a little bit TOO confident in her abilities with the ultrasound, and that it was possible she just couldn't measure it accurately because things are so small at that point. I held onto this and the fact that there'd been a heartbeat over the next week, but mostly my husband and I just tried to keep ourselves as distracted as possible. We built Hogwarts out of Legos and rewatched IT Crowd.

We went in for our 8 week ultrasound, and it was a completely different experience. It was measuring on track, there was a strong heartbeat, and we were released from the fertility clinic to a regular OB. It was so exciting! I still had to keep going with my estrogen patches and PIO shots until later in the first trimester, but it felt a lot more worth it at that point.

We were cruising along until week 10. I was allowed to stop estrogen supplementation at this point, which was cool. My husband had a business trip scheduled, and I decided to go with him. On Sunday afternoon after lunch, I discovered bleeding. Like, a lot of blood. I called my OB's office, even though I'd never been in, and got the worst on-call OB. He was like, "Well, worst case scenario is that you go to the ER and miscarry in the ER bathroom. You should probably just come into the office tomorrow and we'll take a look. Really there's nothing anyone can do for you if you're miscarrying." OKAY COOL. I told him I was out of town, so he responded, "Oh, well, I guess you can just go to the ER then." My online friends were once again my safety net though. From them, I knew that bleeds from subchorionic hemotomas (SCHs) are really common during IVF pregnancies. Basically, a little clot of blood forms in your uterus, and it can cause bleeding during the first trimester, but the pregnancy continues. So I was worried, but not TOO worried, especially because I wasn't experiencing any major cramping. But I wasn't planning on waiting until the end of the week to find out if I was right, so my husband and I headed to the emergency room where we waited FOREVER. But we eventually got an ultrasound. The heartbeat was strong, the thing actually looked a bit babyish now and was measuring right on track, and they saw...a small SCH. So we had an answer for my bleeding, which cleared up on its own over the next couple of days.

Life continued on. I was a bit nauseated and tired, but I got lucky for first trimester symptoms. As an emetophobe, first trimester was kind of my worst nightmare before pregnancy, but I actually managed to make it through without throwing up once! The constant nausea wasn't great, but it was manageable. At 11 weeks, we were able to cut down to every other day with the PIO shots and then at 12 weeks, we were able to stop entirely! My husband was very glad to be able to stop administering shots to my poor, abused butt muscles, and my butt rejoiced. I went to my OB for the first time at 12 weeks, too, and he was much nicer than the on-call OB had been when I had my bleed.

The second trimester was actually pretty smooth. We found out that it was a girl baby. The anatomy scan went well, and we got some cool pictures of a VERY baby-looking thing in there. Overall, I felt like a very normal pregnant person by this point, since I wasn't taking any extra IVF-related medications anymore and I was seeing a regular OB. My anxiety decreased once I started being able to feel the baby move on a more regular basis.

Third trimester arrived, and with it a bit more discomfort. I'm just UNWIELDY now. I was hanging out with my 18 month old nephew, and he started waddling around. Since he's been in a stage of mirroring what people around him are doing, I felt personally attacked, lol.

We have hit a bit of a speed bump recently though. I went in for my 32 week appointment, and the OB heard a heart arrhythmia. I went to a high risk OB for a more detailed ultrasound. They think it's probably all okay (and will likely resolve on its own), but there's a slight chance that it could develop into tachycardia, which would be bad, so they're monitoring the baby weekly to make sure the heart rate is staying within normal range.

So now I'm 36 weeks! The baby is due May 2nd, but I wouldn't be opposed to having her earlier, particularly because a few people who have done ultrasounds recently have mentioned that this baby has a giant head.  I'd already been worried about a vaginal birth because I have narrow, little boy hips, but now I'm somewhat terrified. I plan to talk to my doctor about the possibility of a c-section, but I'm fairly sure that he'll be opposed to that plan. Regardless, I'm excited to meet her and for my husband and I to finally get to be parents. 

-Leah

Infertility and Pregnancy

Hello!

Today's a happy day because my husband gets back from a work trip he's been on all week. I'm usually able to travel with him, but this time I was too pregnant. I hung out with my family that lives in town quite a bit, but I still missed him!

I'm not quite sure what to write about today. I've probably done enough about Gilmore Girls for a while, hah. I guess I can talk a little bit about my pregnancy? Plus maybe the path to get here, since it did take up several years.

Right, so! My husband and I got married in the summer of 2013. We always knew we'd want kids eventually, but we both agreed to wait at least a year before even considering trying. During that year, I was on the combined pill. It did not agree with me. I was nauseous all the time and had no appetite. I dropped a dangerous amount of weight. It retrospect, I can also see that it really affected my moods. I was fairly depressed, and it made my anxiety much worse as well. So in July of 2014, I came off the pill. We still weren't quite ready to start trying yet at that point though, so we used other methods of prevention.

We started feeling more ready for a baby in early 2016, so we did the "not trying, not preventing" thing for a bit. Then when it still wasn't happening, I began to take a bit more of an interest in how reproduction actually works. I educated myself on ovulation and fertile windows, and we got a bit more serious about trying. Then in July of 2016, we learned that my husband had a tumor in his bladder. The doctor was sure it was cancerous, so when he took it out, he also put some chemo into his bladder. My uncle, who is an oncologist, thought it would be wise to take a bit of a break from trying to let any potentially lingering chemotherapy clear my husband's system. We waited for a bit, and then got back to trying.

In the spring of 2017, I realized that we'd had 12+ cycles of good timing with zero positive pregnancy tests. I got all my notes together and presented them to my GP at my annual exam. She recommended I start the process of getting diagnosed with a reproductive endocrinologist (RE). I made an appointment, and we started all the initial testing. We found out I had subclinical hypothyroidism, but basic bloodwork and a semen analysis didn't turn up anything else. My husband had another surgery to remove another bladder tumor in between some of this testing, but no chemo this time so no time off of trying.

I went in for an HSG, which is a procedure in which they put dye through your reproductive system and do an xray as it spreads out. If there's a blockage in your tubes that's preventing sperm from meeting egg, then the dye won't go through and they'll be able to diagnose you with that problem. It turns out that this test can ALSO show when you've got something weird in your uterus.I had a uterine septum, which is a division in your uterus that happens when it doesn't divide properly while forming. My RE recommended surgery to remove it because it greatly increases miscarriage risk (partly because it restricts space for a growing fetus, and partly because if the embryo implants on the septum, it won't get enough blood flow because the septum isn't nourishing like the wall of the uterus is). She also recommended that we look for endometriosis at the same time as we removed the septum because endometriosis is often correlated with uterine septums. Symptoms of endo include heavy, irregular periods, very painful menstruation, bloating, and in some cases, infertility. I gave the okay for her to look for endo and remove any that she found, though I wasn't actually expecting her to find anything because I always thought my pain during periods was within the normal range.

I had my surgery in early fall of 2017. It turns out, I had stage 3 endo. Whoops. I took the rest of that cycle off, but my RE recommended we hit the treatment hard after my next cycle began. She said that my best bet of controlling regrowth of the endo was to get pregnant within six months.

I did not get pregnant within six months, despite the use of high doses of letrozole (a drug that induces ovulation or in my case "super" ovulation, which just means more than one egg is ovulated), a trigger shot to cause ovulation to happen at a certain time, timed intercourse, and eventually intrauterine insemination. We ended up having to take ANOTHER break in between all of this because my husband had yet another bladder tumor to remove, this time with more chemo, and my RE requested 90 days for it to clear his system before we resumed treatment. We took the break and then resumed treatment, but I wasn't responding as well to the medications. Then, my husband and I decided to move, mainly to be closer to a very good doctor for the type of bladder cancer he has (though bonus is that we're also closer to family).

When we moved, I switched REs to someone in our new city. By this point, we'd done enough cycles of femara that everyone agreed that if it was going to work, it would have already. We were ready to move onto IVF. We did all the classes, did some additional testing, signed all the paperwork, and ordered all the drugs. We started stimming in mid-May (this is what it's called when you give yourself a bunch of shots of various hormones to stimulate your ovaries to mature a lot of eggs). I went in for retrieval at the end of May, and they were able to get out over 25 eggs, which they attempted to fertilize and mature into embryos over 5-6 days. In some cases, you can do a fresh transfer of an embryo five days after your retrieval, but I was at high risk of OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which is basically when your ovaries release tons of fluid after an egg retrieval and it makes you pretty sick), which is made worse if you get pregnant from a fresh transfer. Plus, my husband had ANOTHER surgery on Day 6, so timing would have been a bit too hectic anyway. I did end up with some pretty severe OHSS symptoms. It was miserable and didn't fully go away until my next period started about two weeks after retrieval. But on Day 6, I took my husband into surgery and obsessively checked my phone for updates regarding our embryos. We found out that 8 made it to freeze, which was really exciting! I then had to take a bit of time off for my cycle to work itself out.

We started a round of lupron injections to help calm my ovaries down, and then we started medication for a frozen embryo transfer (FET). I found out that the reason that I most likely reacted so poorly to the combined birth control pill back in the day was because my body apparently hates synthetic estrogen. They gave me estrogen patches to wear because estrogen helps your uterine lining to grow so that it's ready to accept an embryo, and I felt really sick while I was on it by itself. I started progesterone in oil (PIO) injections, which hurt WAY more than all the injections up to this point, which sucked. BUT starting the PIO did at least cause my nausea to decrease, which was nice.

Five days after starting PIO (roughly mid-August of 2018), I went in for my embryo transfer, where they place the embryo directly into your uterus. About a week and a half later, I got my first ever positive home pregnancy test in the middle of the night and sobbed hysterically for a bit. I waited until my husband woke up because I didn't want to be a jerk. He knew I was testing that day, so he asked if it worked, and I said yes. He said, "Good," before snuggling back up with me and falling back to sleep, hah. I went in for a couple of blood tests after that to confirm that it was really positive and to check the doubling time (if HCG doubles in 48 hours, it indicates that the pregnancy is ongoing). Then we tried to pretend nothing was different for the next few weeks until our first ultrasound.

This ended up being longer than I was expecting, so maybe I'll cover the actual pregnancy in a different post. I hope this wasn't too boring to read!

-Leah

More Gilmore Girl Thoughts

Hello friends!

I just got back from taking my dog for a walk. I've had a snack, and now I'm ready to blog.

First, I can't believe I forgot the Lane twins storyline! I usually stop my rewatches before I hit the sixth season, so that's probably why. As far as the birth control, they did at least TRY to use condoms, though they should have realized that sand and saltwater could create microtears in the condom that would make them ineffective. But as an infertile, I roll my eyes SO HARD on the first-time-ever-having-sex-getting-pregnant-with-twins thing. Sometimes the writers of that show are just lazy, and this is one of those times. And I agree with Julia, Lane's character deserved so much better than that. I don't even have a problem with her settling down to raise kids eventually (I think she would have wanted this at some point in her life), but she deserved to tour and have a successful music career first. She fought so hard for that, and then it just fizzled out. She also deserved to actually enjoy sex, though I would argue that it's implied that she and Zack give it another try and end up enjoying it.

The other thing that I was going to discuss is Rory's character. Can a character progress backwards over the course of a television series? Should they in some cases? Did Rory? Obviously, yes, it's possible. Should they? Maybe sometimes, though there should be eventual growth, in my opinion. And did Rory? Well...I'm still not sure.

When we first meet Rory, she's quite sheltered (no media was banned, but she still wasn't dating and everyone viewed her as a perfect virginal angel). But she's also driven to succeed in school and eventually life. She's very close with her mother, obviously, though she also has a very close friendship with Lane. Other than that, we don't see her with any other meaningful relationships. The town adores her, of course, but the relationships there are pretty surface-level, in my opinion. And her relationship with her father is seemingly limited to somewhat infrequent phone calls.

As the first few seasons progress, Rory does gain an interest in boys. Her mother, who is supposedly so open about sex and dating, has some freak outs when Rory actually shows an interest in these things. One thing I don't like about Lorelai's relationship with Rory is how she treats her when she makes a decision she disagrees with. Rory is already an extreme people pleaser, especially when it comes to her mom, and Lorelai repeatedly gives Rory the silent treatment, eventually culminating in them not talking for months after Rory drops out of Yale. I don't agree that this should have been a no contact moment, nor do I think that it's okay for a mother to give her teenaged daughter the silent treatment because she misses curfew or tells her grandparents about a termite issue. I think Lorelai's attitude to Rory "messing up" really...messes Rory up. Lorelai, the Gilmores, and the town all expect Rory to be perfect. Christopher's parents and to some extent Christopher want nothing to do with her, regardless of how perfect she is. When she's not perfect, the consequences are sometimes way out of proportion. She's not allowed to really explore herself or her interests without worrying that someone in her life will punish her for it. I think this leads to things like her essentially cheating on Dean with Jess. She's so scared to just say what she wants because she's never really been allowed to do it. And then the dishonesty on her part sort of spirals from there, until she's sleeping with a married Dean and lying to herself that it's okay because he's "her Dean."

Is she entitled and spoiled? Yeah, sort of. Lorelai has catered to her her whole life, I think in an effort to make up for the lack of father and other family involvement. She wants to give her everything, in part I think to prove that she can but mainly because she truly does want the best for Rory. I think sometimes she's just not able to separate what's best for Rory from what SHE wants for Rory, as her mother. The Gilmores spoil her, too, but more materially. The main thing is, Rory is repeatedly told that she's special. Then when someone critiques her or doesn't love her instantly, it can be a problem. She didn't handle it well when Mitchum told her she didn't "have it" and she did occasionally expect to be handed things (the fellowship at the New York Times and jobs in the revival, for example).

The big thing is...does Rory's character show growth throughout the series? I think she does, just not always in the ways fans would like to see. She goes from being a people-pleasing high achiever to being a less high achieving adult. BUT she's an adult that knows when she's not happy and is willing to make changes to fix it, even if other people in her life aren't thrilled about it. For example, Lorelai didn't like Logan, but Rory continued her relationship with him because he was who SHE wanted to be with. And in the revival, she's willing to write the book, even though Lorelai is initially against it. To me, that's progress and growth. So good for Rory, even if I liked season one Rory better.

-Leah

Gilmore Girls Thoughts, Part 1

Hello!

We'll just ignore the fact that I missed the second day of BEDA. I suppose I started as I mean to go on? Oh well, onto day 3!

Julia asked for my thoughts on Gilmore Girls and the revival! That seems like something I can do because I have a lot of thoughts! I will say that they have changed a lot overtime and continue to do so. This will obviously be VERY FULL OF SPOILERS. So warning in that regard!

First, in relation to the revival: I hated it. I should just get that out of the way now. I've only watched it once, despite my numerous rewatches of the first five and a half seasons of the show, because I hated it so much. I loved getting back to Stars Hollow, and maybe my expectations were just too high. The over-hype strikes again.

I think the main thing I disliked is that supposedly all these years had passed, yet the characters had somehow had no growth in between. In fact, they seemed to have gone backwards in some regards? I understand that it would be weird to have a bunch of off-screen plot and character development, but I just found it a bit strange that supposedly Luke and Lorelai had been together all this time and had never talked about marriage or children. Plus, Lorelai's relationship with Emily was worse than ever. And don't even get me started on the insane visit to Paris' surrogacy agency.

At the time of viewing, I hated how Rory's character seemed to have imploded, but I actually have less of a problem with it now. She'd had some success in her field as a freelancer, and I think she was going through a pretty common thing for people around her age: the quarter-life crisis. I think she realized that she didn't have the passion she'd once had for journalism anymore, and she was feeling a bit lost as to what to do next since that had always been her driving force. Thus the blowing of the interviews, the unprofessional behavior with the wookie, and the general aimlessness. I don't like how she treated her boyfriend though (repeatedly forgetting he existed...this attempt at a joke completely missed the mark for me) or a few things about how she and Lorelai behaved, such as the fat-shaming at the pool. There was stuff like this in the original series, but I give it more of a pass because it was a different time back then. However, those type jokes don't hold up well rewatching the series, and they REALLY don't hold up well in a revival that was made so recently. It just felt like cheap shots/attempts at humor by the writers to me. They were trying too hard to bring back the quippy dialogue with that, I think.

Oh, and the final words. As an infertile person, I have a strong bias against accidental pregnancy plots. They can be really triggering to people in the trenches of treatment. But I'll try to separate myself from that bias to discuss this plot point. What is with Gilmore Girls and freaking accidental pregnancies? The entire show is based on one. I get that, and I accept it. But Lorelai and Chris were teenagers, probably with really poor sex education and little to no access to birth control options. Okay, I get it. But Sherry's pregnancy in the original series? Obviously a plot device to break up Lorelai and Christopher, but seriously, they are grown people. They know how reproduction is supposed to work. They have access to birth control. And Christopher has experienced an accidental pregnancy before! Surely he'd be hyper-paranoid. I feel similarly about Rory's accidental pregnancy at the end of the revival. HOW?! How does a girl who was the product of an accidental pregnancy and whose life was indelibly shaped by it somehow get pregnant by accident?? Surely she would have been doubling up on birth control, with an IUD AND a condom or something similar. And if she'd somehow missed a dose of birth control or something, you know she would have been taking the morning after pill. I get the whole coming full circle thing, but really. This would have made some sense at the end of the original series, but not while Rory is a fully grown adult rather than a freshly graduated college kid.

This has ended up longer than expected. I'll save my thoughts on Rory's character in general for a later post.
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Oh, and to answer Bridgette's question, the Terry Pratchett book I'm reading is Guards! Guards!. My husband suggested it'd be a good next step into the Discworld world for me. So far I've read Color of Magic and Monstrous Regiment.

-Leah