Thoughts On My Mind

Just some random bullet points because I haven't updated in a bit and I just don't seem to have much time.

• Work. Ug. It has been overwhelmingly busy and I am feeling burned out. I have been in tears twice this week (thankfully, I work from home). No doubt some of that is hormones. I have as many open issues and my high performing coworkers who work twice the number of hours. I am not providing our customers with the level of support I think is adequate and it stresses me out. I have talked to my manager and we are trying to free up some of my time, but the thought keeps crossing my mind: Should I quit?
  

• Budget / spending wise I can't afford to quit unless we do something more drastic like refinance our house and incorporate those outstanding fertility treatment bills (now on low interest credit cards).

• Healthcare: Why is it the experts who talk about what works and doesn't work in terms of our current healthcare system seem and healthcare systems in general seem to live in a completely different world than our politicians who are charged with fixing the mess? do these people not talk to each other? Sure, politicians have to worry about the financial cost when the big idea people don't - but compare the cost to the Iraq war. Dear politicians: Do what is right not what gets you financial support.

• Eating habits are still poor. I am addicted to my 10:00 am junk food. Yesterday was a wake up call - I am only 10 pounds from where I was when I delivered LB and LBII needs to cook for another 18 weeks. I also got a haircut - 30 minutes looking at my chubby face. Must. Do. Better.
  

• As all parents, I worry about LB's development. With IVF and ICSI and DE I wonder about all the 'unnatural' influences. She doesn't have as many verbal words as I thought she would by now (16.5 months and 5? words). Then I realized she was signing two word sentences like "Where daddy" or "Where phone" or "More cheese". Of course, it really shouldn't matter. She is who she is and I need to remember and live that thought.

• The EC (elimination communication) is going well. She almost always signs when she has to go number 2. She normally doesn't sign when she has to go #1 until she is the middle of going. Still, we offer the potty enough during the day that when we are home she wears panties and no diaper. Sometimes she will refuse the potty and then we have a 'miss' a few minutes later, but I suppose that is all part of the learning process.
  

• We got LB some foam blocks. I find them so relaxing. It is a chance to be peaceful and creative. That is until Babyzilla comes by with a "Woah ho ho!" and knocks them all down. Good times.
  

Not Quite Letting Go

When I made my plan, it never really occurred to me that we would be successful with our FET. It was easy to decide "if it works, I will say good bye to my genetic baby forever". Of course, that was logical too since trying with my own eggs was even more unlikely to work. I knew at some point I really, once and for all, needed to completely let go of having my genetic child.

Oh, but I was excited and hopeful! For the first time in nearly two years I stopped saying (when one of my sisters was making my crazy), "Here I am, the pick of the litter and I didn't get to breed." I started saying (with an internal smile), "Here I am, the pick of the litter and I might yet get to breed."

They were good, hopeful times. I put the word out that I was looking for any left over meds to help defray as much of my out of pocket expenses as possible. I got a couple of promises and some in my anxious little hands. I was even excited about cycling alongside Belinda, our donor. We would make it as hopeful, exciting and stress free as possible. Belinda was excited too. It was right, it would work and no one would have to get nailed to anything!* I enjoyed that thought for 39 days.

Then came the positive pregnancy test on the FET.

I was and still am very, very happy it worked. While it would have been nice to try again with my eggs, the most likely outcome is that I wouldn't have had any of my embryos grow into a healthy baby. There were of course no guarantees that a fresh cycle with Belinda's and any potential FET's would have worked for a sibling. I know I am fortunate not only in being successful (so far) but in saving quite of bit of time, money and stress. It is all good.

So why do I still have these in my fridge and why does it make me just a little bit sad every time I see them?


*From Douglass Adam's book So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Perfect Moment Monday: Best Halloween Ever

Warning - this is a gushing kid post. Please carry on if you are not in the mood.

Sometimes the perfect moment is an ordinary moment you remember to appreciate and be present for. Sometimes the perfect moment is a dream come true.

I give you Halloween 2009:

LB fell asleep in the car just before we expected to go trick or treating. I couldn't wait for her to wake up, but let her sleep until she started to wake up a bit - about 45 minutes later. At the first sign of awareness, I started talking to her and when it was clear she was waking up and not just rolling over to go back to sleep, I scooped her up and started getting her into her customer

I was SO excited. "Oh, LB! Wait until you see what is in store for you! We are going trick or treating!! You are going to be a bee. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!" I went on and on - it was seriously pathetic - to the point that part of me wanted to be cautious - telling myself , "Don't be like your mom - expecting everything to be picture perfect and not enjoy it for what it is."

6:00 pm and we were off! LB dressed up as a bee with antenna on a headband, her little bucket in hand. Brad and I put with sunflower hoods on (get it? Bee? Flowers? tee hee hee). We went to the first house - she kind of got it. Second house - starting to notice a trend. Third house - people talk to me! I get to put stuff in my bucket (she has no idea what candy is)!

Soon she was into the swing of it. Even though she didn't like her headband antenna, she stopped to let us put it back on her before each house. She loved the attention and we soaked up how cute she was - loving every second.

LB continuously reminded us that it is about the journey and not the destination by insisting that she walk between houses like the other kids. Not only walk, but carry her own bucket which was getting increasingly heavy. Soon it bounced on the ground with each step. Brad and I spent about half the time enjoy her independence and about half the time scooping her up and carrying her despite her objections.

Toward the end she was signing "more" between houses. She started knocking on the door herself (not loud enough for anyone to hear her). She loved seeing the other kids who were all super nice and indulgent. One group of young teenage boys tried to get her to give them a high five or a pound. When one succeed he shouted, "I got one!" to the other boys. We trick or treated for an hour and a half and LB showed no signs of slowing down. Fortunately, she also didn't mind when we loaded her up into the car to go to a friend's house.

Oh, the weather was unusually warm too. In short, it was perfect. The next day, Brad and I decided it was the best Halloween either one of us had ever had.

For other people's perfect moments, go see Lori.

Is It Stealing?

A local gas station had a computer glitch for a few hours in the wee morning hours. Instead of charging 2.86 / gallon, customers were charged 1 cent / gallon. A poll on the local news station asked, "If you got gas for 1 cent per gallon due to a computer error, would you pay back the difference?" The results are showing that about 60% said they would not pay back the difference.

It that stealing? What would you do? What does it say about our society that the majority would not pay back the difference?

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In pregnancy news - we are 20 weeks and 2 days and all is going well. I am definitely feeling movement and our anatomy scan shows everything is where it should be. Perhaps it says something about my experience that I said during the u/s, "Could it be that we might have two healthy children?!"

What's In A Life?

Today it seems important to remember the past. It seems disloyal somehow to forget what happened five years ago today. Tonight at around 8:00 pm in 2004, I gave birth to a baby boy. A baby who could have been one of the 34 embryos who (that?) didn't implant or one of the two who implanted for just a few weeks. He had serious birth defects that made him non-viable outside the womb. In a way, he was a pregnancy that went on too long.

Why do I feel the need to honor and remember him when I don't feel the same about the other 34 embryos? In the end, they all had the same potential to life.

I don't believe in a soul. Whoever Ernest might have been had he been well, I will never know. I didn't know him at all. He no longer exists. He was all potential or, more accurately, perceived potential. By all logic, I could let this day pass like the days that I miscarried or days were I am reminded of events during my failed IVF cycles - a moment of sadness or reflection or even to just push the memory out of my mind.

I don't want to be sad today. I don't know how to remember and not be sad. It seems important to remember - as if to tell Ernest, "We remember you." Which makes no sense if he no longer exists.

I don't know. Perhaps we can mark the day in a way that emphasizes and celebrates what we do have while still acknowledging what we lost. In years past, we went geocaching but last year seemed rushed (to beat the setting sun - our first year that we weren't either off work or it landed on a weekend) so I think we will do something different this year. I suppose Brad and I will decide when he gets home.

Oh, Ernest, I wish you were here.

Perfect Moment Monday: Taking A Breath

It is that time of year again and I suspect (I hope) it is coloring my current situation. I have been feeling my baggage lately. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and wonder how I can still be breathing. I wonder how it all went so perfectly wrong - not just Ernest's conception and death but the 2 years before and the 4 years after while we waited for our Someday Baby. I have longed, once again, for our mutually genetic child so strongly that I felt, in that moment at least, I would trade in LB for Ernest to have lived and the following four years to have never happened.

Such thoughts lead to so many doubts: Would I have loved my genetic baby more? Am I really bonded with LB? What does it mean to be bonded to your child? Would I die for her? Am I a good mother to her? Will she grow up to say, "My mom did her best, but I knew she always wanted someone different."?

A few days into this funk, Brad and I were sitting in a cafe holding hands while LB made the rounds to family and friends - getting "pounds" (or however you say it), dancing to the music, signing for more whenever the music stopped. We were watching her meander and then, quite suddenly, the moment struck. It reminds me now of the last time when I was pregnant and I sat down my baggage for a minute. The image is burned in my mind: the feel of Brad's hand, the angle of my head, LB poised to walk out the door of the cafe and into the buildings corridor. Just an everyday, innocent moment; but I realized I was in love - in love with Brad, with LB and with my life - just the way it is. No regrets, no unfulfilled dreams, no still-healing wounds. What a perfect moment and I am so glad I got to experience it.*

Check out Lori's blog to see what other Perfect Moments people are sharing.

*I want to add that I have been thinking about my feelings for LB a lot lately - not just at night when my thoughts can run the most negative, but in the light of day. I realize I would die for her and that my interactions with her come from a place of love not just doing what I think I ought to do. I think we are doing ok.

Just A Little Rant

I will try not to be too negative because this isn't really a big deal, but it bugs me just the same.

The other day I was checking CNN for the headlines. I think it may have been the day the Nobel Peace prize was announced. Definitely some news there, but it was a few other articles that irritated me.

All on the same day there was:

• News that the Dugger's were expecting their first grandchild
• Someone had her second set of twins in two months
• Someone was expecting a boy

The last article I clicked on(in hindsight proving that it IS news) because it was the most non-news of them all. I thought it might at least explain who the person was and why I should care that she was having a boy. It didn't. It just said that this person was very happy to be pregnant, but even happier to know the baby was a boy so she could now go shopping and fix up the nursery. WTF? You and a million other people, I suspect.

Again, why should I care? How is this news?

Ok. I am off my soap box.

As for a more personal update:

• LB may be getting her first illness. She has a runny nose and Brad has a cold. I am hoping it is just a teething thing and it will pass.
  
• I think I have been feeling LBII move lately, but still won't believe it until I see it - next u/s is this Friday.
• We are seriously talking about me quitting my job if we have a live baby in March. I already feel like we don't make enough money, but who doesn't? Everything has trade-off's.
  
• We are shopping for a king size bed. The biggest question - will it fit into our bedroom and will we still be able to open our dresser drawers?
  
• My diet has taken a nose dive. While LB has been mostly sleeping through the night for several months now, I still don't. I wake up every time she moves, which is often. If she doesn't move for several hours, I wake up to make sure she is still breathing. It's crazy. I wonder if it is changing hormones that make it harder to sleep deeply. At any rate, I keep up my energy by eating lots of carbs - usually in the form of chocolate. I pop handfuls of chocolate chips like a addict popping pills.

It seems like I am a bit of a downer today. All my bullet points have a negative bent to them. When I do this to Brad he counters with, "Tell me something good that happened today." Here are some good things.

• I slept pretty good last night.
• LB and I danced to some kid music in the kitchen before work.
• After work, we hung out on a blanket in front of the fireplace and she played while I read.
• Right now LB is sitting on my lap and I am enjoying how it feels.
• Brad will be home soon and I am going to try really hard not to eat anymore banana chocolate chip cookies. (Why do I hear Yoda saying, "Either do or do not. There is no try."?)
  

Milestones

If you look closely at the picture on the left, you will see blue ink scribbles on the strip of wall. I all but had tears in my eyes as I took this picture with my cell phone to send to Brad while he was at work.

We have a little kid who wrote on our wall. How lucky are we?