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People, Places & Things

Data Geek vs. Data Cynic: On Becoming A Parent

By Kiljoong Kim and Natasha Julius

First in an occasional series.
Kiljoong Kim is the Beachwood’s sociologist-in-residence. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago and works as a policy analyst at Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. He believes all data has a story to tell. Natasha Julius has nothing against data, she just doesn’t want to hear any data stories when she’s trying to get her kid to bed.
Data Cynic: I have no idea how long your baby will sleep.

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Posted on February 17, 2015

A Beachwood Radio Special Edition: Diary Of A Lost Pregnancy

By Steve Rhodes with Natasha Julius

On September 17, 2014, Natasha Julius went for a routine 8-week prenatal check-up. It was the only routine thing she would do for more than two months. During this time, she e-mailed a small group of people. Those e-mails – 11 in total – became the basis of the series Diary Of A Lost Pregnancy. At the conclusion of that series last week, we talked about both the experience of a lost pregnancy and the experience of writing about it.

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Posted on February 9, 2015

Diary Of A Lost Pregnancy, Postscript: Here Is What I Suggest

By Natasha Julius

On September 17, 2014, I went for a routine 8-week prenatal check-up. It was the only routine thing I would do for more than two months.
During this time, I e-mailed a small group of people. Some were aware of the pregnancy, some had plans with me that would need to be broken, and still others simply asked after my health on the wrong day. This is the postscript to those 11 messages.
February 4, 2015
Dear Friends,
I promised to write an ending to this story, but it turns out I don’t know how. Because every story starts with a question, it is expected to end with an answer. I haven’t got one.
When I began writing in September, the question seemed straightforward: How am I going to get through this? What I’ve discovered in the past few months is that I’m not. There is no “through this” to get. My second pregnancy contains a void, the contours of which are unknown and unknowable. While the crisis is over, the potential for questions will always exist and I will always find myself lacking for answers.
The question now seems to be, how do I live with this? This story has to become a part of my life, something I can carry with me that fits and makes sense. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting closer. It starts with finding a way to talk about it.

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Posted on February 5, 2015

Diary Of A Lost Pregnancy, Part 11: My Final Goal Was Survival

By Natasha Julius

On September 17, 2014, I went for a routine 8-week prenatal check-up. It was the only routine thing I would do for more than two months.
During this time, I e-mailed a small group of people. Some were aware of the pregnancy, some had plans with me that would need to be broken, and still others simply asked after my health on the wrong day. This is the last of 11 such messages. They have been edited to remove identifying information and inside references, but otherwise remain largely unchanged.
November 25, 2014
Dear Friends,
The decrease of hormones in the blood tends to follow a logarithmic progression, meaning that as time passes and the level approaches zero, the actual amount of reduction slows. My quantitative hCG levels over the past few weeks have moved from 78 to 26 to 13 to 7, so I went into Friday’s blood draw with closely guarded optimism that it might be my last. The results came in yesterday: 4.8. It is, by the slimmest margin, below the threshold for a negative pregnancy test. It is enough. By every definition, my pregnancy is now over.

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Posted on February 4, 2015

Diary Of A Lost Pregnancy, Part 10: Steve The Cat

By Natasha Julius

On September 17, 2014, I went for a routine 8-week prenatal check-up. It was the only routine thing I would do for more than two months.
During this time, I e-mailed a small group of people. Some were aware of the pregnancy, some had plans with me that would need to be broken, and still others simply asked after my health on the wrong day. This is the 10th of 11 such messages. They have been edited to remove identifying information and inside references, but otherwise remain largely unchanged.
November 16, 2014
Dear Friends,
Some of you know about this already, but back in August, just as I was beginning to wonder if I might be pregnant, my cat died. She’d been sick most of the summer and I’d been spending my free time nursing her; sticking drops in her ears, feeding her special food, giving her shots of Pedialyte in one of those baby syringes used to dose kids’ ibuprofen. She rallied for a while and we decided to take a little weekend getaway. When we returned, there was Steve the cat, dead on the floor by our back deck.
It was the first time my daughter had seen me cry. She earnestly asked me, with more than a little worry in her eyes, “Mommy, what’s wrong with your face?”

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Posted on February 3, 2015

Diary Of A Lost Pregnancy, Part 9: Show Stoppers

By Natasha Julius

On September 17, 2014, I went for a routine 8-week prenatal check-up. It was the only routine thing I would do for more than two months.
During this time, I e-mailed a small group of people. Some were aware of the pregnancy, some had plans with me that would need to be broken, and still others simply asked after my health on the wrong day. This is the ninth of 11 such messages. They have been edited to remove identifying information and inside references, but otherwise remain largely unchanged.
November 12, 2014
Dear Friends,
My last blood draw registered a quantitative hCG level of 13.9, which is considered “indeterminate” for a pregnancy diagnosis. As I noted last week, less than 5 is considered a negative result. I’ve been told, of course, that I’ll have to keep getting tested “down to zero.” I’ve also been told I’ll have to test until “the levels are negative,” which made me wonder if there was some magical way to have less than no hCG in my bloodstream, like, I’m so un-pregnant I could actually leach hormones out of my pregnant friends. Anyway, having come so very close to not being chemically pregnant anymore I finally felt brave enough to request a clarification.

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Posted on February 2, 2015

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