Pregnancy after stillbirth: 27 weeks 4 days

Today has been difficult.

I had my glucose tolerance test at the hospital which was OK actually.  Lucozade isn't as bad as I thought.  What you do is not eat from midnight the night before, arrive at 9am ish, have a blood sample taken, drink 410 mls of lucozade, an hour later have another blood sample taken, and an hour later have a third blood sample taken.  Then they test your bloods to see how well you are processing sugar and determine whether you have gestational diabetes or not.  Diabetes when pregnant is bad as if it's not controlled and kept an eye on it can at worst kill the baby.  Less horrific scenarios are the baby being much bigger than expected, which could make labour difficult so doctors might recommend a c -section.  If they do, it's helpful to remember that the c-section isn't the problem,  it's a solution that will help preserve the mother's and the baby's health.

While waiting at the hospital I saw a lot of young babies...and pregnant women.... looking happy.. and it pains me.  Saw some other kids on the weekend and that pained me too.  I'm glad there are healthy kids in the world, I wouldn't wish my situation on anyone, but all I wanted today was to cuddle a baby and cry into them, but I can't do that to a stranger's kid, because I'll look like a nutter.  I just want my son.  He'd be about 11 months old now.  I could look up child development month by month by I won't, because that will just hurt.  So that means I don't know what he'd be like about now.

I'm trying to make an appointment with the physio to look at my pelvic girdle pain.

I saw the Avengers Age of Ultron film on the weekend and enjoyed it..then on twitter today people are being pissy about it because of Black Widow's infertility storyline, which you can read about here, including my response.  It seems to me that people complaining about it aren't those who are actually infertile, or those whose bodies have failed their babies, or potential babies.  It strikes me that most people complaining about it want to see Natasha representing all women, whereas it's clear to me that she's not and what we are actually seeing is her perception of herself, where I can completely understand that her sterilisation means that she sees herself as monster.

If you are not infertile, or if you are childless through choice, you don't get to claim that her portrayal hurts women, because it is NOT your fucking story to tell.  Not all stories have to be about you.

I think I'm getting more scared of labour.  Last year, when everything was so fresh, I couldn't give a toss about labour.  It was hard work, it hurt one hell of a lot, but it didn't scare me.  Now I'm getting scared.  It has to be done, and it will hurt, but induction will be different because this one will be live and I don't know how to manage this or what to expect.  I need to talk to my doctors and midwives about it.

Bendis New Avengers

EDIT - Just found this (and others) in my draft posts folder.  Will be posting them over a few weeks. They look to be about a year old.
Lately I have been delving into Marvel. I've spent the last 6-8 years catching up on 70 years of DC history, now I think I'm going to attempt the same with Marvel.  Maybe.  Well, I'll try a few things out anyway ;)

So, New Avengers was a bit of mix.  It started off a bit weak - even the issues with Echo in weren't that great (probably because she wasn't in much of it).  Then Secret Invasion happened, which I loved, then Dark Reign, which was fun, then Seige, which was dire.  But along the way I found a variety of fun images I'd like to share with you.
I refer you to the centre panel.

What exactly is homepathic magic?  Is it mostly mundane stuff with 0.0000006% magic feeling in it?

From New Avengers 28.

Secret War

A few images from Secret War before I start blogging House of M:

This series is really, really pretty.

Bendis' New Avengers - awesome poses

From New Avengers 56, I give you Mockinbird in the second panel from the top:

 

She is graceful and powerful.  And pretty damn flexible.

From New Avengers: Finale, I give you the main panel.  Now that's how you threaten a bad guy:

Bendis' New Avengers - Spider-man

I think these three pages from New Avengers 51, 52 and 61 respectively are really good showcases for Spidey's character.  Other fans may disagree, but to me, these stood out as key elements for who he is.

That will be the last of the New Avengers Posts.  Next up on my reading list os House of M and all it's tie-ins!

Bendis New Avengers - good art

Here's some pages I particularly like.

These 3 are all from New Avengers 23:

The layouts, the colours, the pencils *swoon*

From New Avengers 30:

The colours!  Dr Strange brings all the colours.

From New Avengers 39:

That's just a lovely page of Echo.

Bendis' New Avengers - babies!

Aw, these panels made me laugh.

From New Avengers annual 1, it's really the bottom half of the page that interests me - everyone's reaction to the child:

By the end of this series I was sick to the back teeth of double page spreads.  There seemed to be between 5 and 10 in every damn issue.  Enough already.

Also from the annual, it;s the little detail of Spidey and MJ in the left hand panel on the second row.  Namely, it's his spider sense going off at the possibility of him holding a baby.  Mate, I know how you feel!

Then, in New Avengers 49, Spidey discovers that babies don't smell too bad:

Bendis New Avengers - Iron Man

These two pages, from New Avengers 25, is the first time I've read Iron Man and understood why people view him as a hero.  Maria Hill also earned my respect in this pages.

Stark and Jarvis have been taken down by someone (I forget who) and a nasty bomb has been left a few feet from them.  Maria Hill arrives with a bomb defuser, but no real idea of the state of the situation.

Hawkeye got deafened

I found out last year that Hawkeye, yes, him of the Avengers fame, was once deafened in comic, and learnt American Sign Language (ASL).  A friend gave me copies of Hawkeye 4 and Avengers 239 to read, as those covered his new found deafness.

Hawkeye 4 is where he goes deaf, after Mockingbird and himself have been captured by a dude called Crossfire who comes up with this frankly batshit crazy plan:

Hawkeye escapes Crossfire's clutches by putting a hypersonic arrow head in his mouth to block the awful ultrasonic sound Crossfire is blaring out at his victims.  This noise is making Hawkeye and Mockingbird fight each other TO THE DEATH!!  It's very dramatic.  The hypsersonic arrowhead vibrates through Hawkeye's skull and counteracts Crossfire's noise assault.  But leaves Clint deafened.

He doesn't want anyone to know he can't hear, and tries to hide it:

Poor Hawkguy.  But never fear! Mockingbird knows something is up and demands he explain himself.  Then they get married.  After knowing each other for all of a week. Uh-huh.

Anyway, I thought this was a good depiction of communication problems.

Then we get Avengers 239.

Yeaahhhhh... this is going to be weird..

So, active and reserve Avengers get invited onto the Letterman show.  Clint's deafness happened fairly recently and we get a look at his coping strategies:

He gets the question sheet before the show so he can prep his answers and give them as requested.  However, it doesn't quite go smoothly:

Beast announces he is forming a new Avengers team and so Letterman's first question is about this.  But Clint doesn't see that the question is different and plows on ahead with his prepared answer.  And does the same with the next (incorrect) question.  Poor guy.  I can only hope that he didn't feel stupid after this.  I think he dealt with it quite well and pulled it off.

Upon reading this the first time, I'm ashamed to say I did wonder why he didn't lipread the different question and adjust his answer.  Upon engaging my brain I figured that Clint is newly deaf, there is no reason to assume he can lipread and he was probably quite nervous and a bit stressed about this interview.  He was concerned enough to prep for the questions and set up a scenario where he could manage the conversation without revealing his deafness.  Even if he did lipread Letterman and realise that the question had changed, what was he meant to do?  He wouldn't know what Beast had said - he wasn't facing him as he spoke.  He couldn't have asked Letterman to repeat himself and he probably wouldn't want to wing it.  Nah, I think he did the best he could.

After I read these issues I read Dan Slott's She-Hulk, where Hawkeye's deafness was referenced in She-Hulk 2.

Jennifer Walters is working as a lawyer and due to the high profile nature of this particular case the jurors have been pulled from the past, a year ago.  One of the jurors is Clint Barton, who died a few months after the point in time he was pulled from.  Jen wants to save her friend but cannot just tell him because she cannot let on that she knows him - jurors are meant to be impartial.  So, she tries to warn him.  In the most stupid way possible:

1) You cannot speak one sentence in English and simutaeneously sign a completely different sentence in ASL. You can't even do the same sentence in English and ASL at the same time, as you'll either screw up the English or the ASL.  They don't operate the same.

2) Why on earth does Jen assume that no one else in the courtroom knows ASL.

3) Why isn't she concerned about anyone asking her why is doing these strange hand movements?  Won't the judge hold her in contempt of court?  Because she sure looks like she's taking the piss.

4) Clint clearly has no idea what she's doing. 

Jen, I get you're desperate.  I get you miss your friend.  But please, don't ever do that again, it's embarassing!

If you want more deaf Hawkguy, Hawkeye 19 is a speical ASL issue.  Hopefully it will be out in JUne, but given the recent delays it could be out much later. Who knows.

Reviews! Of absolutely nothing recent!

Several weeks ago I won some comics in a London Super Comic Con twitter competition. Hurrah.  I have finally read them and so here come the reviews.  They are all pretty old so there's no real danger of spoilers.

The Walking Dead 100

This was surprisingly good.  Given that I enjoyed volume 1 of The Walking Dead, and thought vols 2 and 3 were extremely boring and by the numbers, I'm quite pleased with this.  However it is far more violent, in feeling as well as action, than I expected.  I guess part of that it that is the 100th issue, and events are ramped up for 100th issues, but man alive, this was a bit shocking.  One of the characters gets his head mashed (I mean literally mashed) with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.  There's very little zombies in this, it's all human led violence.  The build up to the scene gave it a greater sense of inevitability and horror.  It kind of reminded me of the way that George R R Martin kills of his characters.  So it's well written and well delivered, but I don't want to read it again.

The Waking 1

Utter shit. Absolute dross.  Published by Zenescope so the cover is all zombie tits and ass and the inside is all moody crap.  With a sex crazed wife who insists on sex every hour.  Her husband is clearly traumatised by this but of course 'the man who doesn't want sex' is just a joke.  Ugh. Absolute crap.  This deserves burning.

Bedlam 1

This is written by Nick Spencer, who I only knew from that one Supergirl issue he was involved in. This is a 44 page comic and the quality of the pages is superb.  It's a bit of a confused comic, but confused in a deliberate sense. The reader is meant to be as mixed up as the events, I think.  The villain is Madder Red, a batshit crazy serial killer.  Then there's a dude who I think is meant to think he's Madder Red, but may not be.  There's a hostage situation, an arrest, threats of suicide and murder and some street muggings.  It is incredibly well put together, very well written, and the art is something else.  Half of the pages are reds and greys.  The rest are muted and everyone looks a little ill.

This is a really great comic and has made me reconsider Image's reputation. If the rest of their books are like this then I get why they are such a big deal and I am now very tempted to check out the rest of their offerings.

Shuddertown 1
This is another crime comic. Again, really great art.  Our hero is a cop with 4 dead people on his hands.  All appear to have been killed by someone who died at least 2 days previously.  There is a long monologue about truth and about how the hero sets people free from lies.  It's a good comic, possibly a great comic, but it's not for me.   I just don't like crime stories that much.

Revival 1
I don't like crime stories except for the occasional times when I do, and then they blow my socks off.  Like Revival.  Man, this is a-mazing.  I will be buying the rest of this series.  There's a town in America where dead people keep coming back to life.  There's a cop and her sister and an old lady who keeps pulling out her teeth but they keep growing back.  There's an FBI investigation into biological terrorism and there's an old pensioner who keeps hitting on women half his age.  This book is amazing and I will be adding it to my pull list.

Star Trek/Dr Who crossover 7
This was pretty crap.  I'm not really a fan of spin off comics, or Dr Who this really isn't for me.  The art is pretty - it's painted and everyone looks like the actors.  But I do not care for it.  Not one jot.


Criminal 1
It's another crime comic, this time with a corrupt cop.  The main villain is looking after one of his dad's mates, who is a heroin addict and has Alzheimer's.  I didn't really care for it.

Valiant 2013 sampler
Utter shit.  I don't like any of Valiant's stuff, and in fact we reviewed Harbinger on the last episode of Radio Bamf and I explained why I thought that series was dross.  None of the other offerings in this sampler make me more impressed with the publisher.

Marvel Zombies 5
I loved this!  I thought I'd hate it, I thought it would be a gimmick, but no, I loved it.  It is really good fun.  It has the robot from nextwave calling people fleshy ones. It's set in the old midwest.  There are adverts for a Dazzler ongoing in it.  I liked all of this.  I will be tracking the rest of the series down.

Avengers 1
This is dated July 2010.  It's issue 1 in yet formation of an Avengers team.  It's pretty bog standard.  OK for what it is, but really suited towards current readers who are familiar with the characters.  I'm not fussed.

Batman vs Avengers

Here's an interesting article on the difference between Batman: the Dark Knight and Avengers Assemble.  It's all about how optimism and cynicsm are treated in those movies.  It's good. It's thought provoking and it's written with a love for the characters.  Go read.