Me and babies: A confusing relationship

I love babies, I’ve always loved babies.  I’ve ohhed and cooed at babies since I was a child.  Babies make me happy.  Even random stranger’s babies at the grocery store put a big smile on my face.

The problem is that now I’m a walking contradiction.  I hold my sweet nephew and smile, then want to cry simultaneously.

I want to hold every baby I see, snuggle them and tell them how cute they are.  I also want to cry.  Every time I see a baby I want to cry.  It makes me happy and then takes me crashing to the ultimate low where I have to examine my own barrenness. 

Every little drooly precious face is a reminder that I don’t have one of my own and may never have one of my own.  Newborns are especially hard, because no matter what I’ll be a mom, but if that means adoption I may never have a newborn.  I think all these depressing things while I’m smiling at the baby.

I used to love to talk to pregnant ladies and new moms, ask them how things were and keep mental notes for later.  Now I see a pregnant woman and do a 180, run as fast as I can in the other direction. 

I turn on white noise in my head when all of my new mom friends start talking breast feeding and sleep schedules so that I don’t have to pretend I’m interested.  Why am I no longer interested?  I used to soak all the baby stuff up like a sponge, even when I was 18 and no where near having kids.  Now I’m 2 years into desperately wanting to be a mom and I don’t want to hear any of it. 

I don’t want to learn from my friends experiences.  I want to experience this stuff with them.  I don’t think my disinterest is a result of jealousy but more an issue of denial.  I feel left behind but if I can manage to ignore that they’ve moved on maybe I won’t feel so behind?

I LOVE Schedules!

Got lots of awesome news today!  It feels weird writing this post before I even talk to Blue but I only get to talk to him once a day, usually in the morning.

I called Nurse Smiley.  On her cell phone.  (I'm still amazed I have a cell number to call and no longer have to talk to receptionists who have no idea what I'm talking about!)  In order are my questions and the fabulous nurse's answers...

1. Me - The Desogen BC pills are terrible, here are the side effects I'm having : nausea, bloating, tender breasts, spotting (for 12 days straight).  Can I please be switched to Apree, I've taken them and they work.
Nurse Smiley - OK, lets switch you.  Doc, is it OK if she takes Apree instead?  I'll fax in the prescription when we get off the phone.

2. Me - I'm stressing about what will happen if my complex cyst doesn't go away.  Do I need to have another lap before retrieval? Another ultrasound before I start the lupron?
Nurse Smiley - Quit worrying!  You don't need another lap, if the cyst hasn't gone away after the first ultrasound we'll just aspirate it during retrieval in a different catheter than the follicles.
Me - Will it take up room on my ovary for good follies to grow?
Nurse Smiley - Quit worrying! No, it will be fine, we see this all the time.  The important part is just not mixing the fluid in the cyst with the eggs, which we'll be ready for.

3. Me - Schedule?  Blue gets home beginning of May, we'll be in Europe May 14th - June 4th.  When should I start what?
Nurse Smiley - Here's the plan.

1. Stop BC pills 5/31
2. Start Lupron 6/21
3. Pre-ultrasound check for ovarian suppression 6/23
4. Stop BC pills 6/25
5. Start Follistim 6/30
6. Possible egg retrieval! 7/9
7. Possible D5 Transfer! 7/14
8. Potential early test date 7/23

Holy crap!  Having a schedule makes it so much more real!  I can't believe we're really doing this!  I wanted to start 2 weeks before this plan but unfortunately we have a wedding to go to that falls right around potential retrieval / transfer times...  Really this plan is the best.  I don't have to have a period right when Blue gets home.  I don't have to take any crazy meds on our trip. I don't have to stress about when retrieval will happen because there is nothing to get in the way!

IF stole my innocence

Flashback to April 2009…  Blue and I wanted to start trying but had to wait due to his crazy job and all the traveling.  We decided to wait until May to start trying because that would be the ‘perfect’ time.  The baby would be due in time so that when Blue moved to Albuquerque, for 6 months, we could go with him.  We’d been waiting for May for what felt like forever.  I’d had a pre-conception physical, started pre-natal vitamins, stopped drinking caffeine, etc.  We were ready for May to be here already!

That April, midway through my cycle, we said screw it and threw away the pills, forget all the perfect timing, we wanted a baby already!  It didn’t happen that month but it didn’t bother us, we hadn’t even planned for it.  The next month we had an amazing 6 day trip planned to raft the Grand Canyon.

Back then baby-making was like this, relaxing and fun...

My fertile time ended up being while we were in the middle of our rafting trip so we had fun ‘baby making’ quietly in the wilderness!  We were so excited, so full of love and so sure it had worked.  After we made it off the river we went to visit my sister in Tucson Arizona for a few days.  I remember lying on the bed in her house giggling with Blue about what we’d name our little Grand Canyon baby.  We had four options, two for a girl and two for a boy.  If our little one was a boy he’d be named either; Wolverine Cyclopes The Hulk Hunter (Blue’s choice) or Canyon Hunter (my choice).  The girl’s names were a tougher pick; Nanny Daisy Hunter (Blue’s choice, a mix of my grandmother’s nickname and my parent’s dog’s name) or Arianna Annette Hunter (my choice, using my mom’s middle name.) 

Don't we look blissfully happy, no cares in the world?

I miss that day.  I miss the naivety of that moment.  Everything was grand.  We were pregnant.  We laughed.  We were so delightfully happy.  Infertility hadn’t weaseled its way into our relationship yet.  Baby making was fun!

I know I will appreciate our baby so much more when we take it home than I would have had we made our Grand Canyon baby, but I can’t help but wish our hopes and dreams hadn’t been stolen.  I wish when we looked at our baby we could go back to those blissful days on the river and remember when we made a life by being together and in love.  I wish we didn’t have any painful memories of the baby making days gone by.  I wish my body wasn't broken.

When IVF was still a hypothetical possibility the idea of a baby made in test tube never even entered my mind, it would still be our baby just like an adopted baby would be.  I was so grateful that we had the option of IVF unlike people 30 years ago or even people in a different financial situation than us.  I thought I’d be excited to share with our little ones how much they were wanted, how we prayed for them to come everyday for two years.  I still use off hand ways to describe what IVF is to people who didn’t understand, IUI is like a turkey-baster and IVF is where the baby starts cooking in a Petri-dish.  The simplicity of those descriptions never bothered me because they were always to people that I loved that wanted this baby for us as bad as Blue and I do.  But the other day I read an awful post on STFU Fertiles Blog about a conversation with an ignorant person who referred to IVF babies as frankenbabies and it made me worry that ignorant, hateful people would make our babies feel like that.  I never even knew that people could be this thoughtless or cruel, this post really angered and disillusioned me.

It made me feel like we needed to keep the details of our miracle baby’s conception a dirty little secret.  Before I read that I always thought I’d shout it on the roof tops.  I would think back to my ‘miracle’ status and think how proud I am to tell people how bad my parents wanted me.  I was no accident, they worked their butts off to bring my sister and I home, and I love to share that with the world.  But there will always be ignorant people, there will always be people who judge us for not choosing adoption, people who think there are babies lined up at orphanages hoping to be taken home.  I hate that I have to worry about this, but alas I am worried.

Will my babies feel proud like I do?  Or will they wish that they’d never heard the term IVF when some red-neck calls them a Frankenbaby?

I'm a miracle baby

Did I ever tell you that I’m a miracle baby?  Some babies are planned, some are accidents and some are miracles, just like ours will be when we get our take home babies.

My mom got pregnant with my first sister at 16, this was in the 50’s and getting pregnant meant growing up, getting married and quitting school.  So that’s what she did, and she was a great mom, she quickly got pregnant with my next sister and then my third sister.  Things didn’t work out with my sisters’ dad so they divorced when the girls were young.  Mom continued to rock as a mom, get her GED and become a very successful real estate agent.

When she was 35 she met my Dad and it was instant love.  They are still in puppy love 35 years later, its amazing.  They decided to get married and since my Dad didn’t have children of his own they started trying to get pregnant.  It didn’t happen, and then it didn’t happen some more.  You all know or have lived this story so I won’t go through the agony of it but eventually her doctor recommended surgery to check for endo.  This was very leading edge in the early 80’s, so she got all cleaned up and then 9 months later got pregnant with my sister Maggie.  At that time they had been trying for 5 years and Mom was 40 years old.

They thanked God for their gift and decided to be happy with one little miracle baby.  Two and a half years later mom started feeling weird.  She went into the doctor to see if she was going through menopause and found out instead that my little miracle butt had snuggled up in her uterus for a nine month stay!  As a lesser miracle I don’t have down syndrome and the odds of having it with a 43 year old mother are very high.  I was, however, almost completely bald until I was 4, everyone thought I was a boy despite my pink frilly dresses.  My sister’s referred to me as a 40 year old egg!  I don’t know if my egg age and baldness actually correlate but it still makes me laugh.

I’m very close to my four sisters, even though the older ones are aged more like an aunt to a “normal” family, we call ourselves Mom’s two litters.  The one thing I noticed with our two litters was the benefit to having older established parents and especially parents who loved each other unconditionally.  I decided this is how I wanted to live my life, I’d wait to have kids until I found the perfect man and we established ourselves. 

I wonder if I’d been an irresponsible teen and not used BC if I’d be a mother right now? 

I wonder if I’d been an irresponsible college student if I’d be a mother right now?

I wonder if I’d thrown away the BC on our honeymoon if I’d be a mother right now?

I wonder if I’d be able to appreciate being a mother if I hadn’t had to work so hard for it?

Europe!

Its official, Blue and I are going to Europe for three weeks then starting our IVF cycle as soon as we get home!!  I bought the tickets yesterday which was really scary but also a relief once it was done.

I’ve always been the responsible focused girl, always had a long term plan in which travelling for longer than a week never seemed to fit.  I didn’t study abroad during high school or college because I worried that they wouldn’t be able to teach all my important science and math classes in another language, and I didn’t want to end up set back a whole year because of it.  I never went back packing through Europe in the summer because I couldn’t afford to, I was busy saving money for college.  Then I graduated and finally had money but only two weeks of vacation for the whole year, so traveling was out again.  Then I had the perfect schedule, for every two weeks I worked I had two weeks off, but I still didn’t take any epic vacations because of Blue’s job and wanting to spend time with him.  Then we were trying to make a baby so I didn’t want to book a trip because what if I was 7 months pregnant?  Would I even be allowed to fly?  What about that amazing wine and unpasteurized cheese in Italy??

Finally there is an opportunity where my obsessive planning and desire to travel didn’t clash.  We've been planning to be pregnant for so long that we've saved alot of money, the IVF is costing 1/4 what I expected and this year I have three weeks of vacation instead of two!  This trip will be a perfect opportunity for Blue and I to spend some quality time before our life is ruled by shots and ultrasounds.  We’ll leave about a week after he gets home so he’ll have some time to rest and we can still take advantage of some of the time off he gets post deployment. 

Here is the plan, fly Anchorage to Frankfurt direct, hop over to Prague, down to Vienna, down to Slovenia, down to the Croatian coast, across the bay to Italy and back up to Frankfurt, all in three weeks.  We’re going to be busy!

(Here is a picture of the Croatian coast for drooling purposes, well thats what I'm doing while looking at it!)

My first blog award!

I was nominated for my first blog award by the lovely Princess Wahna Bea Momma over at The Princess and the Pee Stick .  She actually combined two awards in one so I guess I was given two awards!  I encourage any one who reads this to check out her blog, she spins fabuolous fairytales about the not so fabulous world of infertility.  She is an eloquent writer and never fails to make me nod along in agreement while I'm reading her posts.  So thanks again to the princess for sharing your tales with the blogging world!

The Rules of accepting the awards are:

1.) Thank and Link back to the blogs that gave you your awards (see above)

2.) Share seven things about yourself.

3.)  Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers.

4.) Contact the bloggers to let them know you've given them an award.

I'm sharing 14 things about myself, seven for each award.

1. I'm afraid of cats, spiders and butterflies, really irrationally afraid of all three.

2. I've attacked everything I wanted in life with relentless zeal and until infertility had not found an insurmountable obstacle, because of this IF and I are enemies but I am even more determined to win the war and attach IF to that list of conquered goals. 

3. I’m an engineer.  Or as I prefer to call myself an engi-nerd, it is a pretty nerdy profession but  I consider it my personal job to try and get my nerd coworkers to interact and have started a weekly team building session that requires them to speak out loud and play board games.

4. I love spreadsheets.  I’m an excel guru and make spreadsheets for every aspect of my life.  In fact I made on last week that calculates doubling time for betas (just for the record I’ve never even had a positive pee stick let alone a beta, but why not be prepared?)

5. I have the most amazing husband imaginable.  He is a combat rescue officer in the air force and I like to think of him as a mix of Jack Bauer and the guy from Taken.  In all reality he’s a little less likely to kill people on the spot but he is incredibly talented and amazing in every way.

6. I have two fur babies, Panda and Trapper, 1.5 year old golden retriever / standard poodle mixes.  I believe they are a huge part of me surviving battle after failed battle with IF.  They have taught me a lot about being a mother and I can’t wait to bring home a sibling for them.

7. I’m blunt.  I hope that I’m not untactful and try not to be but I don’t sugar coat things.  I want to be given a straight answer and I think other people deserve that as well.  I despise talking behind other people’s backs, if I have something to say they hear it from me.

8. Doctors hate me.  When something is wrong with me I figure out what it is, how to fix it and then go to the doctor.  I feel like I’m doing them a favor by not wasting their time with a problem that doesn’t require medical intervention.  They feel like I’m telling them how to do their job.

9. When people ask how me and Blue met I answer: through mutual friends, he answers: at a bar.  The truth is we met through mutual friends in a bar.

10. I hate that endometriosis is such a taboo subject.  I think I’m going to have to have surgery again and I’m already worrying about what to say.

11. I’d rather have one great friend than 1000 mediocre friends.

12. This is going to sound crazy but my biggest fear from the time I was 14 was infertility and I’ve never told anyone that.  Maybe it was a premonition, who knows but our true insecurities are hard to admit and this has always topped my list.

13 . I quilt.  Pretty nerdy for a 26 year old but I love the usefulness of the final product and I love the symmetry and angles.  Problem is I am a control freak and cannot make a quilt designed by anyone else so I spend more time designing them on graph paper than I do actually sewing them.

14. If money grew on trees or I lived in a communist country I would be a high school math teacher.  I love math, there is always a right answer, never a subjective grade.  It always came easy to be but I can still explain it well. 

And the Award goes to….

I’m a new blogger so I won’t be able to link to the full 15 as required by the rules but here is my list of favorite blogs.  There are IF blogs and success after IF blogs which I also love because they give us all hope that our blogs won’t always be about IF.  Here they are, I also have them listed on my blog under Blogs I stalk:

Single Infertile Female: Now What?

The Pursuit of Pregnancy

for we are bound by symmetry

COME ON BABY!!!!!

Are You Sure You're Doing It Right?

On the Lanai

Lovin Ma Soldier

STFU Fertiles

Our Love Story

Love, Life, Endo!

Busted Plumbing: When Mother Nature Kicks You Right In the Ovaries!

Initial IVF Consult

Initial IVF Consult, that’s what the receptionist called it when I booked the appointment, it sounded so formal.  From that title I assumed that I would be consulted.  Since I tend to over analyze every aspect of my life, I’ve thought about the appointment at least a million times in the last month.  In my day dreams I walked in and the doctor rushed me through my history, from here it continued on either as a dream or a nightmare.  In the dream version he says great, we’ll start your IVF as soon as Blue gets home, I’ll call you in a few months with more details.  In the nightmare it went like this, sorry but you haven’t done the customary 6 IUIs yet, come back down here once you have and we’ll consider IVF.  In real life it went nothing like my dream or nightmare, it went more like a fairy tale.

I was apprehensive at first because he shares a reception area with another office and it all looks like a public health clinic out of the late 70s.  It was worse when we got back to the consult room because the table (the one with the stirrups we’re all so fond of) was a relic in the 70s.  My mom and I immediately shot each other frightened looks, I had to take a picture!  They had set it up so that Blue could conference call in from Afghanistan which was amazing but I wish I had taken a picture of the phone, definitely a first generation push button, but at least it wasn’t a rotary dial! 

Before my appointment I had a chance to talk to a girl who used Dr. BFP for her second IVF miracle, for her first she went to Seattle to a fancy clinic.  This is how she described the difference, “Seattle was the equivalent of a 5 star hotel, Dr. BFP was a Motel six, the service was great in both but just don’t go in expecting a spa with cucumber water.”  Due to this very apt description I was expecting what I walked into but didn’t expect what came after!

Dr. BFP walked in and it was a little awkward at first since he’s a little lacking in the social skills department, but once we got started it was like we could finish each other’s sentences.  We were on the same page about everything.  He agreed that IUI does nothing for women with endo.  He reviewed my surgery report and agreed that I had enough mechanical blockages that moving forward with IVF was the smart move.  He also said that in a lot of women with endo and sluggish tubes it may appear that their tubes aren’t blocked but they are full of small endometrial implants which are just as bad as completely blocked tubes. 

After reviewing Blues S/A of 140 mill/ml and 60% motility he made a funny face and said sometimes counts that high can actually be bad, there is no research that proves this, its just something I’ve noticed over time.  Because he’s a little worried about Blues swimmers he is going to fertilize a few eggs with ICSI.  In most clinics ICSI costs $3000-4000, he charges an extra $500 for a total of $2300 for a cycle with ICSI. 

During our almost hour long talk he listened to everything I had to say and didn’t rush me.  After he finished with what he wanted to cover he spent another 15 minutes answering all my questions in detail.  Then he told us we’ll be moving forward with the long lupron protocol.  The only thing we didn’t agree on was immunological testing, but after hearing him out I decided that we’ll try one cycle before pushing that issue.

The last question I asked him was why is it so cheap?  He laughed and said “I do this for fun, I love helping make families, I’m pretty sure we actually loose money on IVF but we love it so we do it.  We do most of our IVF stuff during non-clinic hours.”  He also talked about how he used to be a military doc and how sad it was to see couples come in that desperately want kids but couldn’t have them. 

So then he said, “Ok, well let’s go to the other room and we’ll see if you have any cysts and make sure your Uterus isn’t crooked.”  This is when I got the deer in the headlights look!  I was not even expecting an exam today let alone a mock transfer!  We walked into a room much like the last except sitting next to the table from the 70s was a shiny, beautiful, top of the line ultrasound machine.  It looked totally out of place!

There was good news and bad (but expected news).  My uterus is fabulous, but I’ve got two cysts.  There is a 1cm diameter cyst on my left ovary and a 2+cm complex cyst on my right ovary (it was ugly looking).  The bad news is that I can’t have any cysts over .5cm when we start the cycle and complex cysts don’t usually go away on their own.  The great news is that I have a 2cm complex cyst and I am in no pain!!!  That is truly a miracle and I believe in this diet more and more every day.

What we’ll do with this nasty cyst is a question for another day because even it couldn’t ruin my perfect IVF consult.

After the mock transfer we met with his nurse, we’ll call her Smiley.  She was smiley and enthusiastic and answered all our other questions.  She went over the protocol in detail and over the different dosages of meds in detail, and then gave us a full tutorial on how to administer all the shots.  We spent an hour with her and I felt great when we left!

So now you know the long version of my perfect day!  Now the dilemma is IVF as soon as Blue gets home or Europe for 3 weeks and then IVF?

Quick Update

Don't have time for a long one until tomorrow but the appointment went amazing!  I love Dr. BFP!  I went in expecting a hurried retelling of my history and an "ok, I'll get back to you."  Instead I got 45 uninterupted minutes with him, a mock transfer and an hour long info sesh on my protocols and how to take the meds!  More later!

Why Dr. BFP?

It took me forever to write this post.  I've had a draft of it going for at least 2 weeks.  I think the idea of convincing you all that I made the right decision was a little overwhelming.  The truth is that I'm normally the girl who is willing to spend a little more for a higher quality product and so the decision I've made to use a cheaper doctor is totally out of character for me.  Maybe I'm still trying to convince myself I made the right decision.  I still visit the SIRM web page daily...

After a long debate Blue and I decided to use an IVF provider in Alaska.  This may seem like an easy choice since we live in Alaska, but it wasn’t.  Just like they do for good shopping, most Alaskans fly to Seattle for fertility treatments.

There is only one Doctor in the state who does IVF; we’ll call him Dr. BFP.  He doesn’t advertise or even have a website; he lives in a town with a population of 4,087.  His everyday job is a family practice medicine (I can’t imagine a doctor can specialize in anything in a town that small.) 

Alaska is a small place so I’ve found quite a few people who know Dr. BFP or know people he has gotten pregnant (not biologically!)  I’ve asked around a lot to try and figure out why this family practice MD is doing IVF.  From what I’ve patched together, about 20 years ago he was a military doc and felt terrible for all the women he saw who didn't have the oportunity to start a family with out adoption.  Once he got out of the military he went to study with the best of the best, Steptoe and Edwards (just for reference this is who Dr. Sher at SIRM studied with as well) and since then he has been researching and providing IVF for Alaskans. 

Now for the controversial side… He isn’t a board certified reproductive endocrinologist.  This is a drawback, but in some ways it is also a benefit.  He provides IVF to help create families and with that goal he makes a point of keeping it affordable.  His fee is only $1,800.  It’s been the same for at least the last 5 years, maybe longer. 

The $1800 fee doesn’t include the meds or ultrasounds, but the average cycle with Dr. BFP ends up costing around $5,000.  The average cycle with a fertility clinic down south ends up costing $15,000. That means if we flew to Seattle we would pay $15K plus the cost for the flight, hotel, rental car and 2 weeks off of work, my rough calculations put this at $19K. So with Dr. BFP we can have 4 cycles for the cost of 1, and we don’t have to go through the stress of flying out of state. 

My first appointment with him is tomorrow… we’re (my mom and I) leaving here at 7 AM to drive the 3 hours it takes to get to the tiny town where he practices.  I’m really nervous, I’m not sure why.  I have everything ready, it’s all in my purse so I can’t forget it and yet I feel like I’m forgetting something important.  Maybe it’s Blue??  He is going to try and call from Afghanistan tomorrow during the appointment but I’m not getting my heart set on it in case it falls through.

Wish me luck!!

Being IF is a full time job

My first IVF consult is this Thursday.  It is less than 3 days away.  I’m freaking out.  It doesn’t help that Blue wont be there with me, at least my mom will be, guess I’ll never grow up!

I have a whole list typed out of what I want to ask.  I even have a printed list of what I need to do before Thursday so I’m ready.  Normally lists help calm me, but this time around it isn’t working.

The fertiles of this world love to tell the infertiles to “just relax”.  It happens often enough that there are whole blogs titled after that ridiculous but frequent comment.

Here is my response:  I did relax.  I relaxed for the first 6 months we tried.  I relaxed for as long as it took you to make it through your first trimester, maybe even second if this hypothetical fertile got pregnant the first month she tried.

It’s easy to relax when “trying” is still fun.  After that you don’t get to just relax anymore, you get to chart, go to gobs of doctors appointments, get blood drawn countless times, take drugs that make you crazy, etc. 

Working harder at being stress free is even more stressful.  Acupuncture appointments?  What will I tell my boss when I need to take yet another hour off of work for a doctor’s appointment once a week?  Pretty soon he’s going to think I have cancer.  As it is I have to take the whole day off Thursday to drive 3 hours for my IVF consult.

Being an infertile is a full time job.  In fact I’ve spent the entire morning while at work just trying to get prepared for this doctors appointment, googling ridiculous things, etc. 

Anyway, here is my current list of questions for Dr. BFP.  Are there anymore you think I should add?  Maybe with your additions I’ll feel prepared enough to relax a little?

1.       What protocols do you use for Endo patients?

2.       Being a 26 year old stage 3 endo girl what are my chances of success?

3.       Immunology testing, natural killer cells, antiphospholipid antibodies? Intralipids administration pre-IVF?

4.       Hormone tests needed before I can start BCPs again and enjoy life pain free for a few months?

5.       Should I have another laparoscopy before to clean up endo/cysts?

6.       Ultrasound monitoring: Who are good docs to work with?  Have you worked with Base docs before?

7.       When would I need to be there (since its 3 hours away)?

8.       Do I need to be on bed rest after transfer?

9.       Are there any supplements I need to take for the next few months to get ready?

IF made me an asshole

I was home sick for the last two days and kept seeing ads for a new show on Lifetime called One Born Every Minute.  It’s a reality TV show about an Ohio maternity ward where they deliver gaggles of babies every year.  I’m dumb, so I watched it.

There were three couples featured: a hippy couple, an older well established couple and a ghetto couple.  I have to give it to them for splitting up the demographics like that.  Anyway, I always struggle with accidental pregnancies (there was only one on this episode) but I was able to find reasons why I deserved a baby more than any of those other women.

Infertility has made me an asshole. 

Here are some reasons why.  The hippy couple was mean to their nurse and didn’t want an internal monitor for the baby.  Clearly I would be nice to my nurse and would do anything if it meant keeping my baby safe.  The older couple seemed ambivalent to the gift they’d been given, the women was 40 and was having her second baby in less than a year, plus when the nurse asked if she wanted the baby on her chest right after it was born she said no because it would be slimy.  The ghetto couple came in to start her labor and then the dad had to leave to go to Wal-Mart and buy a car seat / stroller.  I already have a car seat and a stroller, which obviously makes me better right? 

I realized after the show that maybe God wasn’t giving me a baby because I’ve become a judgmental woman that doesn’t deserve one…

So from here forward I will try really hard to see a pregnant woman and new parents as just that, parents who have been given a wonderful gift.  I will stop looking at them like people who have stolen my gift.  It is not their fault that my body is failing me.

Focusing on the positive

Blue left yesterday.  I’m really sad but also feeling guilty because I know there are some wives that go more than a year without their husbands.  So for now I’m just going to be happy that he’ll only be gone for 4 months! 

We had a great week together before he left.  My boss was really kind and gave me two free days off work and Blue and I took advantage of them!  We actually stayed off the topic of TTC for almost the whole week which helped us focus on what was important, our relationship.  It was really nice to take a whole week off of obsessing. 

I’ve decided that while hes gone I’ll focus on getting our new house decorated (we just moved in mid October) and work out a lot!  I have several craft projects planned, I’m going to make seat covers for two window seats in our living room, crib bumpers for my nephew, and a BDU (camo) tote out of Blue’s old uniforms!  Lots of fun plans!

This is one of the window seats i'm going to cover, as you can tell the room is pretty white right now, it needs some color!



These are the top two fabric choices. I really like the blue in the bottom one and think it would make fun accent colors but the other is really fun and retro.  The cool thing is I can change the fabric when ever I want since its pretty cheap.

The room is very bland right now, white walls, two beige couches and one brown couch.  Bottom line it needs color, bad!  I have until the weekend to decide which fabric to use, they are on sale Friday through Sunday.