My 44 day miracle and faith restored....

Back when I was hopeful that Blue and I might still make a baby on our own, when I was still symptom spotting and blissfully naïve, I goo.gled something along the lines of “early pregnancy symptoms” and it brought me to a website called twoweekwait.com.  From there I spent time obsessing with all of the other hopeful mommies-to-be and eventually the mommies-that-might-not-be…  It was my first infertility resource. 

The one thing that always amazed me on that website were two women who regardless of their fertility struggles always supported everyone else, from the teenager who didn’t want to be pregnant to the 10 year battle scarred warrior. 

These two women’s blogs were the first I read, they inspired me to read other blogs and eventually start blogging myself.  Through them I found S.I.F’s blog, and S.I.F. as most of you know has become one of my very best friends in real life. 

As I continued to blog and eventually meet more women in the trenches there were a few along the way that I latched onto a little more than others.  Not all of the connections made sense, not all of them even have a similar story to me, maybe I just connected more with the way they write or the emotion they put out, who knows?   But as anyone who blogs knows, we connect more with some than others.  Along the way most of these women got their miracle baby/ies, one way or another. 

One of these women I’d connected with kept struggling and my heart broke for her a little more each time, just like it did for those first two women I’d met through twoweekwait, and for S.I.F...

For some reason, these four women continued to be childless and honestly my heart and hope broke a little more each day, and I lost a little more faith in God's desire to perform miracles each day that these women lived without a child to call their own.  Somehow my own success didn’t matter in regards to my faith, because these four had been left behind.  I thanked God many times for helping me to survive my journey to Marek, but I purposefully didn’t thank him for my miracle, because I wasn’t sure I believed he handed out miracles to faith-lacking infertiles like me.

And then, as S.I.F and I like to joke, Uranus moved the hell out of the way and those four women, my special four, all in a matter of 44 days, got their miracles.  Each story is a little different, it’s not like they all brought home their bundles in a 44 day period, but each one hit an incredible milestone which means something vital to each of them, and in turn meant something vital to me, and my faith.

January 9^th, Henry was born!  My incredible friend Kara, who I’d met in the very beginning and cried crocodile tears  for many times along the way finally had her take home baby…

February 13^th, LisaB reached her second trimester. In a history plagued with early losses and heartbreaks for Lisa, she could never really trust a pregnancy before this milestone, and today she’s still chugging along at 17 weeks, almost half way there!!!

February 13^th, I was already on a big high because of the first two, but still aching for my other two, and then, out of the blue, Cheek’s mom called…  and in a day it appeared S.I.F’s life was going to be forever changed, and so was mine…  Overnight we all became a whirlwind of activity to prepare for a baby with one week’s notice.

February 14^th, with my heart already about to burst, Lisa got her first doubling beta ever,  on their third and final attempt at IVF they finally got their dream answer!  Lisa is the odd man out, I haven’t known her through my whole struggle like the other three but I latched on to her and her story from the first time I visited her blog, I’m not even sure she’s stayed too current on mine, (because sometimes it’s not fun to read stories of success when you’re still hurting) but I still thought about her often, and checked up on her blog even when I didn’t keep up on anyone else’s.

February 21^st, Cheeks was born.  The most beautiful little girl I’ve ever met got to meet her momma for the first time. And I got to sit in the waiting room wondering how these miracles had all happened at once…

And then I did the thing I said I wouldn’t do, I thanked God for these 4 babies, and for Marek.  I told him I was sorry that I had lost so much faith.  I cried so many tears of joy, and laughed because no one would ever really understand what it meant for me that all four of these miracles had happened in just 44 days, especially because there is no other tie between these four but me...  Why had I latched on to these four?  Why did these four mean so much?  How could all four of these miracles happen in just 44 days?  There is only one answer in my mind, the big Man upstairs.

I waited on baited breath until today to write this because I was waiting to hear how Lisa’s last US went, and, as icing on the proverbial cake, it went perfectly. 

My heart is full and my faith is restored.

Hawaii

We just got back from a great trip to The Big Island with Blue's family.  We spent 10 days in the sun alternating between relaxing/playing and chasing our little crawler around in the sand/water.

Have I mentioned that Marek LOVEs to swim?  Blue took him on his first swimming lesson just before he deployed with Marek was 2.5 months old.  He likes it more and more everytime we take him and Hawaii wasn't any different.  Now he actually tries to get away from us so he can swim on his own, its really hard to hold on to his slippery little body in the water!

I didn't think much about our Hawaii trip last year until we got to the security line at the airport to fly home... then it all hit me.  This is where my bad contractions started last year...  I remember curling up in a ball in the security line and debating wether to get on the plane or go to the hospital.  I ultimately made the right choice to get home and ended up going to the hospital 2 days later.

Most of the time its hard to remember back to how hard pregnancy was, or even how hard infertility was.  There are still alot of triggers that take me back (and by surprise) but most of the time I'm a pretty in the moment momma.

I'm so thankful for this little miracle and getting to be the one that pulls the rocks out of his mouth and holds on for dear life as he tries to swim away from me in the ocean!



Playing with Sand...

Eating Sand....

 

Eating Rocks....

Totally oblivious to the Seaturtle at his feet, wishing he was eating sand or rocks...

 

 

"Does that mean camels are ugly?"

I watched my niece and nephew this weekend (4 and 6, respectively) while my sister-in-law took a class.  We were driving down the road and the subject of camels came up, hoping to share a little trivia, I asked them if they knew what camel humps were made of.  They suggested water (as most people assume) and I shared that they are actually made of fat.

My nephew was quiet for a minute then asked, “Does that mean camels are ugly?”

What a profound question! I’ve always wondered when societal prejudices/stereotypes start effecting how children look at the world and I guess the answer is before the age of 6…

I paused for a minute (while my mind was busy being blown!) and responded with this.  “I don’t think being fat or skinny makes you beautiful.  I think that one camel would think another camel looked strange if it didn’t have humps at all.”  We left the discussion at that.

Hind sight is 20/20 of course but I really wish I hadn’t suggested that looking different made you ugly.  I want my children to understand that beauty is a function of who you are, not how you look, but how do you explain that to your child when they throw something like that at you?  With an adult I feel like we could have had a long discussion about societal conventions of beauty but with a kid you need to put it into a few sentences and how is that possible when you’re not expecting it?

Maybe the answer is the Socratic method… maybe if I were a perfect parent/aunt the conversation would have gone like this:

Nephew - “Does that make camels ugly?”

Me - “What do you think makes a camel beautiful?”

Nephew – “Its fur? Its long legs?”

Me – “What about bears?  Is a black bear more beautiful than a brown bear or a polar bear?”

Nephew – “Polar bears need more fat to stay warm than other bears so maybe fat is prettier on them because they need it?”

Me- “What if a polar bear had 3 cubs instead of 2 and had to share some extra food and so they were skinnier than normal, would that make them uglier?”

Nephew – “No because they were taking care of their family.”

Me – “What do you think makes a human beautiful?”

Nephew – “Their hair/weight/eyes (fill-in-the-blank physical attribute).”

Me – “What about the way they act or how they treat their friends and family? Are they still beautiful if they are mean?”

And so the conversation goes…  Maybe Socrates had the right idea, let them come to their own conclusions with just a little guidance in the questions. Maybe at the end my nephew would still think that fat humans are uglier humans than skinny ones, but maybe I could have changed his view of the world? 

In the end I’m just glad I got to have that conversation before Marek was 6 years old, it reminded me how important it is to let him know everyday that he is beautiful and that I am beautiful, because we are ourselves and there is no one else out there like us.

Christmas and New Years 2012

I plan to do a full 2012 look back soon but for now I figured I’ll give you a little run down on Christmas and New Years!



Little Crawler



Our little buddy started crawling 2 days before Christmas (7 months, 3 weeks old).  He’d been up on his knees rocking back and forth, scooting backwards, turning circles, etc for a whole month but didn’t quite pull off the coordinated forward crawl until he got the right motivation…. Christmas presents!  After the initial coordinated crawl it only took him 3 days to be able to go where ever he wanted, even on slippery hard wood.  I think he’s a little too independent for my taste…

My family’s tradition is for the whole family to get together Christmas eve, so the whole 25 person family came to our house, ate Mexican food and laughed.  We had a few close friends join us too, including S.I.F. and a friend of ours who did IVF 5 weeks after us.  It was so fun to see Marek and her son together and Auntie S.I.F. loved having both boys to snuggle.

Auntie S.I.F. and her boys

Marek was incredibly patient for all the photo ops I subjected him to.  I found these fun Christmas head bands at Joanns and some how he tolerated each one long enough for me to get cute pics!



Merry Christmas!



Santa's Reindeer

Two days after Christmas Marek managed to get slap face, AKA fifths disease (and possibly stomach flu, jury is still out if the slap face caused those symptoms or not?)  He then proceeded to give it to my mom, who gave it to my nephew, S.I.F., and another friend who we spent New Years eve with…  By some miracle Blue and I never got it (despite getting puked on, in the face…)  So the new year was rung in with way more vomit than normal!

We spend NYE out “at the lake” (my parent’s house.)  We cross-country skied, ice skated, drank brandy ices, set off gobs of fireworks, hung out around the bon fire on the lake, spent hours working on a 1000 piece puzzle, played cards and of course ate Black Eyed Peas for good luck.



Hanging out by the fire watching fireworks!



Family Tub Time with his cousin

 It was a great 2012!

I Miss Blogging

It has been 4 full months since I've posted here.  I've missed it.

Life got a little crazy with Blue's deployment and managing Marek's allergies but things have slowed down enough now that I'm hoping to start blogging regularly again....

Quick updates on life:

Marek and I attempted to continue BF for 2 months after finding out all of his allergens but got to a point where breast was no longer best for either of us.  Since switching him to hypoallergenic formula we are both much happier people!

We have started introducing him to solids slowly, as of now he can have rice cereal, squash, spinach, sweet potatoes and chicken.  We're hoping to introduce a fruit next.  I'm still too paranoid about corn contamination to buy baby food so I'm still making it all myself (which is super easy and I'll probably just keep doing.)

We had him re-tested for allergies and he is still allergic to 15 of the top 20 allergens, the only one he got back was garlic, at least his food will taste good!

Blue's deployment went smoothly and we're so happy to have him home.  I have the utmost respect for single parents, it is a really hard job!



First snuggles after Daddy got home

 We spent most of October and November in Montgomery Alabama for a military school.  We had a great time touring the south and just enjoying the warm weather!

Baby's First Oysters on Bourbon Street in New Orleans!

Marek is now the proud owner of 2 teeth and likes to use them on anything he can get his mouth around.  On thanksgiving he bit his own arm so hard he left a mark that lasted the entire day...  He sits up on his own and started crawling on the 23rd, turns out he just needed the right motivation and coffee cups and Christmas presents provided it!

He wore these antlers around without complaining for so long!

I'm back at work 2 days a week and Marek stays with his Nana (Blue's mom) one day and his MaMaw (my mom) the other.  Its the best of both worlds and I'm praying I can keep this schedule up for a while!

 I'll update with more pics soon.  I swear all I've done for the last 8 months is take pictures of my little man...

A Year Ago Today Series: Day 1

I'm planning to do a series of posts about things that happened exactly one year before and how completely different my life is now.  I hope for these posts to be inspiring to those of you still in the trenches and will try and give some good insight into where I was mentally then and where I am now...

A Year Ago Today, August 24th 2011, was our egg retrieval.  The day that little Marek started cooking up in his petri dish...

One Year Ago Today

I just went back and read my post from that day, I was feeling extreme relief.  Relief that things were no longer in my hands (ha, like they ever were!)

When we came to Vegas we were expecting to have a very disappointing response to the stims, Dr. Sher had warned us that we may not get to transfer because we'd need to do another round of retrieval in order to get enough viable embryos to freeze some.  Dr. Sher told us his goal was 8 mature eggs to work with and miraculously that is what we got.

I have to take a break here and plug Dr. Sher.  I really don't believe it was a miracle that we had 8 eggs, I think it was because we had the best Dr. in the world.  He knew exactly what we needed to make the most and highest quality embryos we could get.  I put all my trust in him and it was the best choice I could have made.

I need to be honest too, most of me was really excited that we got 8 eggs but the rest of me was disappointed because statistically it meant that we'd only have 1 or 2 to transfer and none to freeze... I tried to focus on the positive, that we would have at least 1 embryo to transfer and that we were blessed to have that, but I would be lying if I didn't admit there was a little bit of disappointment in my withered old ovaries.

A year ago today the bitter wall that I built up to protect myself during my years of infertility started to crumble... I didn't want to hope too hard incase our babies didn't make it but I knew I needed to keep positive for them, so I let hope creep in, and I got lucky.

I got this incredible face to stare at...

Cloth Diapering

I fell in love with the idea of cloth diapering (CD) long before we started trying to get pregnant.  Some friends of ours CDed and made it look so easy!

They used Bum.genius so I was already partial to them.  I researched diligently until we actually had M and everything I read pointed to Bum.Genius.4.0.s.  I convinced my sister to use them first, she and her son were awesome product testers!  Her son is 22 months, still wears his, and they're in great shape, plenty of use left for baby #2.

Rainbow of Diapers Drying

CD is a great option for lots of reasons.  Most important, it is so cheap!  Even though we bought brand new, pricey diapers ($18/diaper) they've almost paid for themselves and he's only 3.5 months old!  We have 24 diapers which is perfect (but it was a little tight when he was a brand newborn).  It was a little bit of an investment but well worth it, we put him in them when he was 10 days old since that is when he reached 8 lbs.  At that point we had already bought about 60 dollars worth of newborn diapers since he was pooping and peeing so much.

I feel good about using them since they're good for the environment and great for diaper rash.  He had diaper rash the first 10 days of life and we had to use tons of butt cream but since then he hasn't had diaper rash once.

Here is how they work...  They are a pocket style diaper, which means they have a water proof outer layer with a wicking material attached that pulls the moisture away from their bum and inside of that cover you stuff an absorbent liner (or two depending on how much they pee).  They have all sorts of snaps so that you can make them what ever size the baby needs at that point and change them as they get bigger.

Showing the pocket where you stuff the liner in.

See how white the insides still are after 3 months!

The liner, it can be snapped to 3 different lengths.

A blue diaper.  The two rows of buttons on top are for cinching in the waist. The next row is for making the crotch size smaller/bigger.  

We have only had 4 or 5 leaks in the 3 months we've used the diapers and they were usually from soaking through the liners because he peed a lot or stayed in them a long time.  We have only had 1 poop-splotion and that was inevitable, it was a monster poop that no diaper could have contained.

Here is our system...  When I change the diaper I pull out the liner, drop it in the wet bag (water proof bag that lines our diaper pail) and spray the poo off into the toilet with a diaper sprayer (spray nozzle attached to the toilet water supply line.)  We do laundry every two days.  When its time I just dump the whole bag into the washing machine.  He uses about 8 diapers a day so we wash about 16 at a time and have 8 to use while the rest are washing/drying.  They say you can tumble dry the covers but that they last better and stay nicer if you line dry them so we do.  You do one wash with no detergent on cold, then a hot water wash with a second rinse and special diaper detergent.  Then we dry the liners and hang the covers.  At first I stuffed them all as they came out of the wash, now I stuff them as I need them.  I have one bin in his changing table for covers and one for liners.

Changing table

Bin for liners

The reason I like pocket diapers better than all in ones (basically pre-stuffed) is that you have more flexibility, you can stuff them with more/less depending on how much absorbency you need then, i.e. night time.  Also you have to tumble dry all in ones which means they don't hold up as well as the line-dried covers of pocket diapers.  Plus, (this is probably all in my head) they seem cleaner some how... like separating the parts lets the soap get to everything better... make sense?

Does this diaper make my butt look big?

Downfalls... they're not great for traveling more than 1 day.  For daily trips we just put the dirty diaper in a plastic sack and spray the poo off when we get home, but for weekend/longer trips it is hard with out a washer dryer and diaper sprayer.  But one weekend of disposables is pretty cheap, so that works for us.  They also are pretty big and make the baby's butt look big, this is a personal preference, I think it looks cute, and the bigger they get the less disproportionate the butt to baby ratio is.

Plus, in the words of Blue, when he wears them "he just looks more comfortable..."

Corn is the devil

Well, I promised you guys a post on M's allergies, especially Leisel, so here it goes!

Marek was the happiest baby ever until about 2 weeks old, then things started to change.  He started crying a lot more, especially when he was pooping.  And he had significant amounts of mucous in his poo, like giant stringy loogies (sorry, gross I know.)

Luckily my sister had been though this a year and a half before.  She went to the doc and was told to start by cutting out dairy and eventually had him allergy tested and his symptoms completely resolved when she cut out all of his trigger foods.

I started by cutting out dairy and eggs.  Things were going pretty well.

At this point I started to get my endo pain back (thats right, breast feeding only kept me in remission until 1 month PP) I had to go back to gluten free to save myself (and my liver since I was pounding advil like nobody's business.)

I didn't understand how but for some reason going GF made M's symptoms 10 times worse... He was inconsolably crying, crying when he ate, and throwing up (which until then he'd only done about 3 times in his whole life.)  We found out after testing this is because I was eating so much more corn and he is SEVERELY allergic to corn.

We finally got him in to see his pediatrician and demanded allergy testing.  At that appointment they tested his stool and there was blood in it.  Unfortunately they couldn't get us in to see the allergist for 2 weeks.  The pediatrician recommended during that time that we do a 24 hr test on hypo allergenic formula and keep all dairy, gluten, egg, corn and rice out of my diet.

The allergist started by doing prick tests for type one allergens (the type that cause you throat to swell up).  They tested him for 20 different allergens and then came back 15 minutes later to read the test.  He tested positive for peanuts...  Ouch.  So no more peanuts or anything processed in a facility that processes peanuts in our house.  We also got an epi pen junior and lessons on how to use it.

At this point they started the process for testing for gastrointestinal allergens.  The way the doctor described these was like a reaction to poison ivy on all your mucosal membranes, he thinks Marek has something called eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorder (but they can only confirm the dx with a colon biopsy which we hope he never needs).  They test by putting on a big sticker with tiny discs full of foods stuck to it.  They put the patches on Monday, remove them Wednesday and then read the results on Thursday.

Here he is getting ready in his precious tiny hospital gown

This is right after they put the patches on.  The purple dots are where all the type 1 allergy pokes were.

This is on Wednesday when they first took the patch off.  The one that is allready bloody is corn.  They marked underneath were each patch was so they knew where to read the results.

This is Thursday when they read the results.  I want to cry for his poor back.  

Of the 20 patches they put on M reacted to 15.  The worst one, the one just above the 10 on the last picture is his reaction to corn.  He is also allergic to wheat, barley, rye, oats, potatoes, soy, eggs, pork, peanuts, green beans, peas, carrots and garlic.

He didn't test positive for milk but apparently that is the one food with a high false negative rate.  My plan with milk is to completely avoid it for the first few weeks and then try it back and see how he does.

As for everything else... I can't eat any of it.  And corn hides in everything.  I'm still going to try and breastfeed for as long as possible because there is only 1 type of formula he can have and its incredibly expensive.  I really didn't realize how badly I wanted to BF until it looked like I might not be able to.

We met with a dietician right after they read the results and it made me feel more confident about being able to eat this way.  I think I'll start posting some allergy free recipes on here too.  Its definitely possible to eat well from whole foods only and as an added positive I have a feeling the baby/infertility weight is going to be pouring off!

Its been a week since they read the results and he is a different baby.  So much happier, healthy looking poop and you can just tell he feels better.  It is totally worth it!

Busy Busy and Deployment #2

Sorry I've been MIA for so long.  Lifes been crazy around here.  We've been enjoying the Alaskan summer, dealing with Marek's extensive food allergies (another post to come...) and sending Blue of to Afgahanistan again.

I've taken about a million pictures in the last 3 months, many with the intention of writing a post about the subject but as you can tell that hasn't happened.  I hope to get back to posting and updating you on our crazy lives soon.

How do you guys feel about baby updates and this blog losing alot of its infertility twist?  I know its my blog and people have a choice about reading or not but I also don't want to hurt anyone.

Here's a picture of our little fam just before Blue left.

This one makes me cry everytime I see it.  Its amazing how different this deployment is emotionally than the last.  Last year I was sad for me.  This year I'm sad for Blue.  He is having to miss so much time with our little guy, so many giggles and tiny milestones.  It just doesn't seem fair after how hard we worked to bring him into this world.  I started a blog just for Blue so that I can post tons of pictures of M and tell him about our daily advenures so I hope that will help him not feel so left out.

If you're the praying type I'm sure our family could use some over the next few months.

Newborn Photos

I am blessed to have an amazing photographer for a best friend!  She came over when Marek was a week old and took his newborn pictures, sorry I’m just now showing you them!  Today he is 6 weeks old, it makes me sad to say it out loud…

It’s a strange shift to go from infertility (and the pregnancy from hell) where you constantly wish the time away, to a new baby where you desperately want time to stand still.  What if this is our only baby?  This may be the only 6 week old baby we ever have, just thinking about that scares me, makes me want to savor every minute.  Unfortunately feeling that way just makes the time go faster.

Here is my tiny boy… He barely looks like this anymore!