Tales of the Lazy Ovaries

My NEW Blog...

2009-06-02T02:31:00.003-04:00

Hi Y'all. So, it's been a loooong time. I've been letting my PCOS get me down rather than writing about it and getting my feelings out. It's time to share my thoughts and feelings and keep up with my blog, but I've decided to continue blogging at TypePad and to change the name of my blog just a bit. I always made jokes that my ovaries were lazy, but it turns out that a lazy ovary is a real thing and it's not PCOS. LOL. And I thought I knew everything about ovaries. So anyway, it's going to be called Tales of the Polycystic Ovaries and my new web address is: http://talesofthepolycysticovaries.typepad.com. So please stop by and say hi there. I'm going to move my blog roll over to that site. Email me at totpco@gmail.com if I don't have you on my blog roll and you'd like to be listed, or if you are currently listed and would no longer like to be on my list. Hope to see you over there!

xo
Amy

Aislinn Turns 2!

2009-02-04T12:04:00.007-05:00

Hi there. Sorry to write such a weepy post and then not return. I'm still sad and we have talked about adoption (thanks D.K.). We actually talked about adoption a while ago. At this point we don't have enough money for adoption or IVF so, maybe we'll revisit that someday but for now we're just trying to keep our heads above water. I guess in that sense it's good that I'm not about to have a baby in 10 days.

So, Aislinn turned 2 on January 29th. We spent her actual birthday alone with her. We didn't have family or friends over, we just wanted it to be the 3 of us. I pretty much let her have her way all day unless she was doing something naughty. We had so much fun. Our neighbors came over with a cake around lunch time and the kids played and then had some cake. She took a short nap, the shortest nap ever. When Howie came home we opened gifts, had dinner, made cupcakes with Aislinn and then ate them. Then she had a bath and went to bed. It was a good day.

On Saturday we had her birthday party at The Little Gym. It was the easiest and most fun birthday party ever. I want to have my birthday party there. LOL. The kids ran around and played on the gym equipment but we also played with the air track that blows up and they jump on, and the parents were allowed on too! We played with the parachute, bubbles, this giant wheel that they got to roll over. It was a good time. Then we ate cake which I made so that it was peanut free for my niece, vegan for my neighbors, and gluten free for a friend of ours. It was tasty. Family came back for lunch and to open gifts. My sister, brother-in-law, niece stayed late and had pizza with us. My sister-in-law was there for the weekend so it was nice to see her. My brother wasn't there because he's somewhere in Iraq right now. It was a really good time.

I can't believe how grown up she is. Yesterday we went in for her 2 year check-up and she got to stand on the scale, stand against the wall to be measured, had her blood pressure checked for the first time, and she got to wear a little gown. She's so grown up. I can't believe it.

I made a montage of her second year. She was such a baby last year and now she looks like a big girl! Ok, enjoy the montage!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Pregnancy Symptoms?

2009-01-26T09:23:00.002-05:00

Ugh, I'm on birth control but it's sugar pill week and I have not yet had my period. The whole reason I'm on birth control is to make sure my period comes and then goes. I clearly don't need it for pregnancy prevention. How silly. I did eat some grapefruit though so I guess if I were the lucky type I could have gotten pregnant. That so doesn't happy to me though, let's not be ridiculous. I am extra weepy lately though. I have no problem breaking down and crying over absolutely nothing at all. And I've been sooooo nauseated. I don't even want to think about eating. So, what the hell is going on with all the symptoms. Ugh. I love the worst of the symptoms when a baby is involved but there is no such thing right now. I peed on a stick on Saturday night and then again last night. BFN. Why do I bother? I hate pee sticks.

Maybe it's just me. No joke, EVERYONE I know in town is pregnant. Ok, just EVERY woman. If they're not currently pregnant they just had a baby. I really can't take it anymore. I feel like my head will explode. My husband told my neighbor that I'd be coming to her Pampered Chef party yesterday because he thought it would be good for me to get out. Are you kidding me? The moment I walked in her door I went straight for the bottle of wine and filled up my glass. I stood there for an hour drinking as much wine as possible so I wouldn't break down in front of everyone. I'm usually a happy drunk so I was thinking that if I got drunk enough I wouldn't care that my neighbor's pregnant belly finally popped and I lived through watching guest after guest getting a tour of the nursery. About 1 1/2 bottles later I was able to take the tour myself. Then we had to look at pictures of her and her other pregnant friend putting their bellies together. Oh God! All I could think about is how I should be hugely pregnant right now. I should be due to have a baby a few weeks from now. I should be meeting my new baby on Valentine's Day. This whole thing is becoming unbearable. Aislinn is turning 2 on Thursday and I can't stop thinking about how quickly she grew up and how I could just go back and slow things down because I'm not going to get to do that again. I sound like her birthday makes me sad. It doesn't really, I just wish you could go back and visit little moments again.

Aislinn is great. I love her like crazy. She is more and more amazing every day. She's the best thing to ever happen to us and I'm thankful for her every day of my life. I love her so much I want more.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-30T23:53:00.003-05:00

Just days before Christmas two of my friends had babies. I think that the fact that the babies are here somehow makes it easier on me. I thought that I'd have a massive breakdown but it turns out watching my friends BE pregnant was more tramatic for me than them actually having a newborn. I don't know. I could be wrong. I haven't actually seen the babies in person yet so who knows. Breakdown or no breakdown, I am happy for them. We were all pregnant at the same time and then I miscarried so I think that in addition to being sad about loosing the baby I was also sad that I was no longer sharing the experience with them.

Anyway, I'm dealing with the fact that I'm not pregnant and that there aren't any frozen embryos for another cycle. That's it for us unless we win the lottery. After having a pitty party for myself I got over it and decided that I have to find a way to get pregnant without IVF treatments. I have already read a lot about PCOS but I got online and read somemore. I also bought The PCOS Diet Cookbook because I'm getting bored in the kitchen and need some new ideas. I'm about to get a jogging stroller so that I can get my ass in gear. Aside from the obvious need to kick my ass to lose weight I've found two different options for PCOS in the form of supplements. The first is the Insulite Labs PCOS system which was developed to reverse the effects of PCOS. The other is FertilAid. There's a formula for both men and for women. I found it when trying to find a way to improve the morphology of sperm for Howie. I researched this all over the internet and found a lot of positive feedback about it for both men and women. I don't have my hopes up. Believe me, if it worked I'd be shocked, but there's no harm in trying. I'm not taking both suplements at the same time because I don't want to overdose on my vitamins so I'm just taking the FertilAid for women right now and Howie is taking the FertilAid for men. I'll be impressed if my period comes and goes regularly. I'm charting my basal body temperature for fun too. So far, I've got my period, but that's no surprise since I just got a BFN on the pregnancy test a couple of weeks ago. What does impress me is how light my period is. It's usually so heavy that it's a wonder that I'm able to stand up and function. So far I've been bleeding for 4 days so the trick now is getting it to stop. Once I start to bleed I don't stop. I will be sooooo excited if it stops. How nice would that be? I'm just taking baby steps. I'm trying to keep myself from daydreaming about peeing on a stick and seeing two lines. Although, I can say that if this does work and I do get pregnant I am going to freak the fuck out. I would just explode! But please, lets focus on how exciting it'll be if my period STOPS, and then starts again in the next few weeks? and then stops again! I'll have a small party with balloons and... umm... I don't know, some kind of PCOS friendly dessert! So keep your fingers crossed for me and my hopes for a normal 28 to 30 day cycle!

Negative

2008-12-17T13:13:00.003-05:00

Umm... so I'm not pregnant. I am, however, very bitter and very pissed off and a touch of sad. I don't know what to say. I don't know if there are any frozen embryos yet. I'm very sure that my mother-in-law is all sorts of pissed off about the amount of money they "wasted" on this and I am still NOT pregnant. This does mean that I will be drunk off my ass through Chanukkah, Christmas & New Years. Happy Holidays!

Waiting

2008-12-16T02:02:00.003-05:00

My... week 1/2 wait is over on Wednesday. In the past the two week wait started after transfer but this time it seemed to have started on the day of retrieval. It hasn't be any easier than a full two weeks. I peed on a stick on Sunday, or maybe it was Saturday, I don't know. It was negative. So were the other 2 after that. I know it's still early-ish and I know that you can get false positives when the hCG from the trigger shot is wearing off and the hormones from the possible baby are kicking in, but it seems like everyone in the world gets a positive but me. Of course, I think that's later, and this is still kind of early. I didn't do one with any of my IUIs or the IVF cycle when I got pregnant with Aislinn so I don't know what is normal for me. I just waited it out because that is what the doc advised. I wish I had done the same this time because now I'm just driving myself more crazy. I mean, I'm exhausted, I have been all day, and here I am up at 2 am!

So, possible symptoms? My boobs hurt so much. They hurt more and more each day. I'm exhausted... but I'm always exhausted. However, this really is a whole new level of exhaustion. On Friday I couldn't stay awake and I fell asleep while Aislinn watched 1 1/2 hours of Backyardigans. TV is a great babysitter! Then I woke up and played with her until it was time for lunch and then it was nap time for her and for me too. I slept for another 3 hours. Then Howie came home and I think I might have fallen asleep on the couch again. I slept just about 90% of the day on Saturday and I didn't sleep but I laid around all day on Sunday. I get winded when I walk up the stairs. I honestly have to take a minute to catch my breath when I get to the top and I'm huffing and puffing. On Friday I desperately wanted buffalo wings and on Saturday all I wanted to eat was onion. I know it seems early for cravings but I was the same way when I was pregnant with Aislinn. I started to tell myself that it's just all the hormones in my system doing it to me, but it's the way I felt when I was pregnant with Aislinn and before my last miscarriage so that's what I know. Oh, and I'm really moody. Bitchy, cranky, and weepy. A Zales commercial made me cry last night. It was really sweet. And I got a bit teary during Chuck tonight but I don't think that Howie noticed that. I have awful headaches but I don't think that's a pregnancy symptom. Well, I guess it could be. I had a brief moment on Saturday night when I was sure I was going to yack but I didn't. I felt a bit like puking tonight too but I didn't. Let's hope I don't.

Let's hope that it's not just the drugs, lets hope that one or both of the embryos have grabbed on. Now I think I can maybe get some sleep. Night night!

Day 3

2008-12-08T23:59:00.002-05:00

I went in on Saturday for a day 3 transfer. Their paperwork said to come in with an uncomfortably full bladder. Their idea of uncomfortably full was drinking 32 oz. of water starting an hour before the transfer. Look, my family has always made fun of me for what seems like an unusually small bladder. When I was little we were evacuated from a beach home we were renting in RI because of Hurricane Bob. There was barely time to pack our stuff and our animals into the car and get home so I don't know if I just didn't remember to go to the bathroom before leaving or if I did but had to go again. We were driving home to CT in rain so heavy you could barely see outside in our ghetto minivan that would stall whenever you break for too long in rainy weather. I don't understand it but that was really the problem with the car. I waited as long as I could before asking my Dad to pull over somewhere. The whole family was so pissed off that I had to stop and pee in the middle of this storm and they were afraid the car would stall. They pulled over at a McDonald's but they still talk about the time I had to pee during Hurricane Bob. Since then I would dehydrate myself before trips or whatever so that there's no need to stop. No good, I know. One of my worries when I got pregnant with Aislinn was that I would have to pee at the most inconvenient times again. I got over it, and the fact that sneezing would make me pee, but my new clinic wanting me to come in with an UNCOMFORTABLY full bladder. The last place just said moderately full, which is something that made me anxious enough, but I wanted to do what they said because they also said in the paper work that if my bladder wasn't full enough they'd have me sit and drink more before the transfer. Man, I've never had to pass the full bladder test before. So, even though I thought it would be a bad idea I drank 32 oz. of water in an hour. I wasn't feeling too uncomfortable at first so I was getting worried that I wouldn't pass the full bladder check. When they took me back to have me change I just lied to the nurse and told her I was uncomfortably full. I said it a few more times on the way to the room so she decided to not check it with the ultrasound. Then I got really worried that when they were ready to do the transfer they'd feel that I wasn't as full as I previously said. Within like 2 minutes of waiting in the room I got uncomfortably full. The doc came in and asked how many we'd like to transfer. We asked what the embryos were like. Turns out we still had 8 embryos but it was obvious which ones were the best already so they didn't think it was necessary to wait until day 5. He went through the grading of the other embryos. There was a 4 cell, slow, 6 cell, still a bit slow but maybe it'll make it, others were 8 but two of those 8 rocked and those were the ones they recommended for transfer. I felt my bladder getting fuller and fuller so I just said "Lets do the two! I'm sold! Sounds great!" The nurse came in, we signed the paperwork, confirmed our identities and I laid back. The doc was all about making sure I was comfy. I told him that I wasn't because of the full bladder and the nurse pressing down on it with the ultrasound. One thing that distracted me from my discomfort was the screen they had on the wall that was hooked up to the microscope in the lab. They put our dish under it and there was a drop on it. You couldn't make anything out in it but then they zoomed in and there they were, the tiniest little embryos. I know they're tiny but I could never really wrap my head around it until I saw them on the screen. They sucked them up and brought them in. At this point I was really concerned about peeing on the doc and I let him know it was a possibility. I just wanted to give him fair warning. They got them in before I exploded but as soon as they did I asked if I really had to lay there for 20 minutes before I peed. Normally I'm all for it but the need to pee was far beyond everything else at this point. So the nurse told me she could give me a bed pan. I don't care who looks at my girlie parts but peeing in a bed pan with people around? I realized I was horrified with that idea but I had to take the bed pan. Howie thought it was funny. I thought that I had peed as much as I could but she emptied it and said I had about 5 more minutes, about 2 minutes after that I had to go again so badly I thought that I might cry so I made Howie go out and tell her so she let me up early. I tried to walk and not run but it was more like a run to the bathroom and I had never felt better in my life.

So, sorry this whole post is about pee, but I felt like the peeing had overshadowed the embryo transfer that day. When we got home Aislinn was so excited to see me and it was hard to explain to her that she couldn't climb on top of me and that Mommy couldn't pick her up. We had already decided that she'd spend the weekend with my in-laws because she's very attached to me and it would have been a difficult weekend with her. Howie felt it would be easier for me to rest and all of that if she weren't here. She's actually still at my in-laws but she's coming back tomorrow. I miss her like crazy! We've talked to her over skype every night and she got a little weepy each time and actually told us "I cry" which broke my heart. I can't wait to give her a million kisses when she gets home.

So, that's the story. I have a picture of the picture of the embryo. Our scanner isn't working so I couldn't scan it.

EIGHT!

2008-12-04T10:13:00.001-05:00

Yeah, two posts in a matter of an hour or so. Wow! Ok, so I got a call from my clinic and out of the 15 eggs retrieved there were 11 mature and 8 of them fertilized! We have EIGHT embryos!!! YAY!!!!!!!!! Wooohoooooo!!! Ok, now we just have to get to day 5.

I've been sleeping

2008-12-04T08:33:00.003-05:00

Hi blogosphere. I haven't been posting because I've been dead tired and sleeping whenever I can but here's a quick update for you.

I started my Lupron injections around November 13th... I think it was the 13th. I started my Follistim and Menopur injections on November 22nd and lowered the dose of Lupron. This past Monday, December 1st, we got the green light to take the trigger shot. I took it at 12:30 am that night and went in yesterday (Dec. 3) for an 11:30 egg retrieval. Last time they got 13 eggs which was disappointing to me but this time they got out 15. The extra two they got out this time made all the difference to me, why I don't know. I'm just crazy happy that after just 9 days on the meds (rather than 3 weeks at my old clinic) I was ready for retrieval and with fewer days on the meds, less needling and less probing I produced 15 eggs. I'm so in love with Doc Major. I don't know how many embryos we have yet, but I'll find out between 12 & 2pm. I can't wait to find out how many we have. They wanted to do ICSI this time too. They have us scheduled for a day 3 transfer at 11:50 am but hopefully they will reschedule for a day 5 transfer on Monday. Fingers, toes, legs, arms & eyes are all crossed.

Until then I will try to spend as much time as I can with Aislinn. No more playing horsey soon, or spinning around and falling to the ground outside. Not being able to do the things she loves to do makes me feel sad. I know it'll be ok and I'm being silly but I just feel guilty about changing things up on her. In 9 months she could be a big sister and she doesn't know it could be coming. I know it'll all work out and she might need time to adjust but it'll all work out just fine in the end. I know it'll be exciting and all of that but I so love my time with Aislinn and it's harder on me than it probably will be on her when it has to change. I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe nothing will change at all. I'm just going to have a good time with Aislinn and do as much as I can with her before the transfer.

Speaking of Aislinn, here are some new pics of her.

The Hysteroscopy

2008-11-02T10:52:00.002-05:00

Last Monday I had my hysteroscopy. Surgery doesn't worry me any. I'm not too worried about things going wrong. I know the possibility is always there but chances are pretty good that things will be fine. I look on the bright side. I get to lay around in comfy paper-like clothing. Some nice person puts me into a deep sleep. When I wake up I usually get to see at least one good looking male doctor. Then I have the post-op mini meal. After leaving the hospital everyone is nice and pampers me and I get to lay around and watch anything I want to watch on TV.

The surgery started late but that's ok. I was busy watching HGTV in my pre-op room and I got to go to the bathroom and pee alone before the surgery so that they didn't have to put in a catheter. The anesthesiologist gave me some Valium as I was wheeled to the OR. I remember the OR being amazingly cold and making a joke to myself in my head that it was probably good to make the room a freezer because if someone dies on the table you want to keep that body cold. I know, sick joke, but I kept it to myself. A team of people was prepping me. They were sticking those round sticky things to my chest, other people were putting some padding around my lower legs and ankles and then the anesthesiologist gave me something that knocked me right out. Next thing I know I am awake but my eyes are still closed and I hear Doc Major telling the other doc from the clinic that was there with him to watch the surgery that he didn't expect to find so much in there. I instantly felt bummed out because I knew that he had to do more than simply pluck the polyp out and that meant that we weren't going to move right into the IVF cycle. Then I heard someone say "I'm going to start wheeling her to the recovery room". I few moments later Doc Major asked how I was feeling. I told him I felt good. He told me that things went well and that he was going to have me start my birth control again. Then he told me he was going to talk to Howie and then he'd be back to check up on me. A little while later he came back to see me and told me that Howie was going to treat me like a princess for the rest of the day. I was still a bit groggy but I remember someone asking if I had any cramping and I said yes. They asked what the pain was like on a scale from 1 to 10 and I said a 4 or 5. That pain went away quickly because they put something wonderful into my IV or something. After about 15 minutes (I think) they wheeled me into the recovery area where I could be fed and Howie could join me. I asked for a turkey sandwich with mayo and an apple juice. It was sooooo gooooooooooooooooooood. I was already half way through my sandwich when they brought Howie in. I don't remember how much longer I was there but I was feeling pretty good when we left. I was craving some BBQ chicken so Howie stopped at the grocery store to pick some up and then we went to CVS to get my pain meds. I was still feeling kinda wacky when we got home. Aislinn was so excited to see us when we got home. Howie kept telling me to rest but I wanted to play with Aislinn. I wasn't doing anything strenuous, but I just wanted to be up instead of laying down. I felt good all night and didn't feel like I needed any of the Oxycontin.

Tuesday was good too. I was a bit tired, but no pain. Then Wednesday rolled around. I felt a little bit of cramping and there was just a tiny bit of spotting. Thursday the cramping was a bit worse but it only hurt for a few hours after I woke up and again there was a little bit of spotting but by 11:00 am all of that was over. On Friday the cramping lasted until about 1:00 pm but I just ignored it because it was a busy day. I had to meet with my nutritionist at 10:00 am, then Aislinn and I had to drive another 20 minutes to meet her friends for a Halloween party. Then I had to get her home and put her down for a nap. During her nap I had to run a load of laundry to wash her costume for trick or treating that night. I also had to clean up the house. When she woke up I fed her dinner and then got her back into her costume. When Howie got home I had to shower and then get into my vampire/devil costume. We left a giant bowl of candy on our front steps and met up with our neighbors for trick or treating. After the kids filled their bags we had a little party at the neighbor's house with apple pie, cupcakes and apple cider. It was fun. Saturday morning I was in enough pain the I took 800 mg of ibuprofen. That worked fine and we all went on with our day.

This morning I woke up with a new level of pain. I went to Aislinn's room to get her out of bed. I wanted to let Howie sleep in but in the middle of changing Aislinn I realized the pain was so bad that I had to call Howie in to finish changing her. I went to the bathroom and found that I wasn't just spotting. It was more like light bleeding now. The cramps were also more than cramps. It felt almost like I had gas, but it hurt in my uterus and (excuse me if this is TMI) my vagina actually hurt. Howie had brought Aislinn downstairs so I went down to lay on the couch. I curled up on my side hoping that the pain would get better but it got worse really fast. It almost felt like I was about to give birth to my insides. That's the only way I can describe it. It felt like something was going to come out of me, like I was about to give birth, no joke. I started to get really scared and the pain was so bad that I had to start to scream a little. Howie gave me one of the Oxycontin to help relieve the pain and then plugged in a heating pad for me. It didn't seem to take too long for the Oxycontin to kick in and then I fell asleep. I don't know what the hell that was, but I know I'm going to call Doc Major in the morning and figure out what we can do about it.

Oh, I never explained what Doc Major found in my uterus. He found more growth in my uterus than he expected. He cleaned it all out while he was in there but decided that I should take another month of birth control and then we'd move into an IVF cycle. He showed the pictures of my uterus to Howie after the hysteroscopy. I haven't seen them yet but I hear that they are very exciting.

I was going to post cute Halloween pics of Aislinn but I'm high on Oxycontin at the moment and I'm feeling like I might fall asleep. I'll post the pics next time, I promise.

Boring Hysteroscopy Update

2008-10-16T13:52:00.010-04:00

Someone from Doc Major's office called yesterday to schedule the operation to lop off my polyp. Yeah, I probably should use the real term for that procedure, Polyp-lopectemy? Just kidding, but if it was up to me that's what it would be called. Ok, so I'll be having a hysteroscopy on October 27th. Good times, right?

We'll, I'm totally exhausted for no good reason at all. Aislinn is taking a nap so I better take a nap of my own while I can. To make up for my short and boring post I will leave you with some cute pics of Aislinn. Enjoy!

Freckle's Ugly Cousin... In My Uterus

2008-10-15T08:17:00.005-04:00

Yes people, I have a uterine polyp. I went in for my saline sonogram yesterday and it was very obviously there. It's absolutely possible that it was there when I had the FET but Dr. Sunshine doesn't check for polyps in all patients every 6 months like Doc Major (yes, I have a nickname for my new doc... he was a major in the army so there you go). So, it's possible that the polyp ended the pregnancy. Whatever, this whole thing is bullshit. Doc Major doesn't want us to focus on how that may have caused the miscarriage because we can't do anything about that now and we just need to move forward. Argh. So, anyway... we're going to have that lopped off sometime this month. We haven't scheduled it yet. The nurse will call with my doc's schedule and we'll get that done possibly by the end of the month. For now I'm on birth control again to just keep my ovaries quiet and to keep those evil androgens from screwing with my body. The rest of our plan stays the same. Lose weight and exercise! Yes sir!

On a totally unrelated topic, Howie and I just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on October 12th. We've known each other for 11 1/2 years. We've had a lot of hard times but we've also had good times. Howie is my best friend and he is a wonderful father. I can't believe it's already been 5 years and I can't wait to see what the future holds. Here's a little video montage of the past 11 1/2 years Howie and I have spent together and hopefully next year at the end of the video Howie and I will be thinner, LOL.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Trying to Pull It All Together

2008-10-10T15:49:00.002-04:00

Hi Blogosphere! It's been forever, I should just quit this blogging thing. I'm so inconsistent. I doubt anyone reads anymore but I forgot how nice it was to have an outlet for my thoughts and feelings so I'll try to keep it up.

So, my last post was forever ago. The end of May. Frost defrosted PERFECTLY! And settled in PERFECTLY. Hormones were rising PERFECTLY! Then right after I went in for my last blood test I started bleeding. Not a little, A LOT! I mean, labor like cramping and blood clots literally sliding out of me. It was awful, but when I got my results back from the doctor that day my hormone level had more than doubled. Two hours after the bleeding started it stopped... COMPLETELY! It was odd. It made no sense. That night I felt fine. I went in for another blood test and the level continued to rise. We had an ultrasound and the baby was there and it appeared to have a heartbeat. So, we went on with life as normal again until a week later when the exact same thing happened again. I dropped Aislinn off with my neighbor and went in for an ultrasound. The baby was no longer there. I cried all the way home. It was awful.

It took like a month and a half for my hormone level to go down to 0. I was trying everything to distract myself from what was happening. Shopping, painting, cleaning, re-organizing the house, researching miscarriages and PCOS. Then I got my first period after the miscarriage and it went on for 3 months. How annoying is that? It's hard to stay happy and positive when your body is going through all of this shit. I'm mad, I'm sad, sometimes I'm ready to move on. I have 4 pregnant friends. I am happy for them but it's just hard to watch them all get bigger. We were all going to be pregnant together. Aislinn is the same age as their first kids and our second ones would grow up together too. It's not like I have to have kids when they do, but... whatever. I don't know what my point was.

Howie and I went to see the new fertility doc here in town. I can't keep seeing a doc in VA, that's just silly. So, I'm seeing her friend who just happens to work in the town I live in in CT. Weird. He's nice. I'll have to think of a nickname for him someday. He was shocked to find out that I have had my period for 3 months because usually with PCOS menstrual periods are unlikely evens, as many of you probably know. So, he immediately had them set up a room so that he could give me an ultrasound and he also had them draw some blood to see if I had anemia and some kind of thyroid issue plus a few other things. Who knows. Things inside of me looked good. Woohoo! Later that day I got my blood test results, I'm not anemic but they wanted me to take iron anyway because it's fun to take and it's a damn miracle that I'm not anemic. My thyroid though... well... that is all out of whack. I have a hypothyroid. PCOS + hypothyroidism = fat, tired & infertile. Well, at least we know what's what now. He had me take some progesterone every night for 10 days and I'm taking another thing for the thyroid issue. I am no longer bleeding to death and my energy level is better. My acupuncturist also gave me some Chinese herbs to stop the bleeding and I think that had a lot to do with it too. Tomorrow I'm going in for some acupuncture and I'm also meeting with my nutritionist to discuss what to avoid and what to add to my diet now that we've added hypothyroidism into the mix. I have another appointment with my new doc on Tuesday afternoon. We're going to discuss how the meds are working and do a saline sonogram just to take another peak inside. Yay!

So that's the quick update. I now must return to cleaning this house. It's a crazy mess and Aislinn should be waking up from her nap any moment. Here's a cute pic of Aislinn pumpkin picking this past weekend.

Night Before the Thaw

2008-05-27T22:32:00.003-04:00

Howie, Aislinn & I are in VA for the FET. If all goes well the appointment is scheduled for 1:30 pm. My best friend, Brenda, is going to babysit Aislinn while we're at the clinic. I was feeling good and having a good time up until now. I have been trying to keep my mind off of the whole defrosting Frosty thing. Tomorrow we'll find out what happens. My stomach is in knots and I'm starting to obsess about the odds that our one little frozen embryo will survive the thaw. I know the odds aren't great and we only have one shot at this. I love Aislinn and if she's our only child that'll be fine. She's beautiful and amazing. We are so grateful for her. I would just LOVE to give her a little brother or sister. I just want a shot at it, I just want Frosty to thaw well. After that we'll worry about the next step. Keep your fingers crossed for us. We need it!

Fire Baby

2008-05-12T20:44:00.004-04:00

As you know from my last post, we started off Mother's Day by burying Howie's grandmother in Long Island. Before heading to the funeral we had time to squeeze in a Mother's Day cupcake for breakfast along with some Starbucks coffee. Yum! We got to LI a little before the funeral, just in time for a quick lunch at a diner. I had a super greasy and extra tasty bacon cheese burger with sauteed onions. Why not? Aislinn enjoyed some strawberries that I brought for her and then she had some of grandma's toast and I think some of grandpa's french toast. When we finished up there we went to the cemetery and waited for Howie's grandma's body to arrive. We talked to the Rabbi about his grandma. While we were there Aislinn kept wanting Howie's mom to hold her and kept giving her kisses like she knew she needed a little extra love. It was sweet. She was being cute and making everyone smile even though it was a sad day. She makes everything better. During the actual burial Aislinn was getting hungry and a bit cranky so I put her down on the ground and she picked some little buttercup flowers that were growing in the grass. It was getting a bit cold and she had a sweater on but Howie took off his jacket to put around her. She put it over her head and was walking around with it dragging on the ground. We started to laugh because she looked like ET. After his grandmother was buried the Rabbi came over to talk to us and Aislinn gave him one of the flowers she picked and he said thank you. For the first time ever she didn't seem to want what she had given away back. We made her a bottle when we put her into her carseat and she she had finished it before we even left the cemetery. She was pretty good on the way home. She didn't sleep. She had slept for maybe about an hour, maybe less, on the way to LI but on the way home she didn't sleep. Anyway, when we got home it was a pretty normal night. She played, then we fed her dinner, and then it was upstairs for her bath. Her head felt a bit warm to me when we were getting her ready for her bath so we just quickly just used the ear thermometer. We know it's not the most reliable but we figured if she had any kind of fever it would let us know and then we'd do the more invasive rectal temp. The ear thermometer said she was fine so we put her into the bath and she was having a good time, as usual, until the end. She started to shiver so we figured it had something to do with the bath. I wrapped the towel around her and we took her into her room. She was still shaking like crazy so I put another towel around her and then Howie put a blanket around her. She continued shaking and looking really tired. We quickly got her dressed and then brought her down stairs. It was pretty early for her to be that tired but we were thinking that maybe she was just worn out from all the running around during the day and the fact that she had only taken a short nap in the car. We decided to give her a bottle so Howie went to go make it. I sat down with her on the couch and read Snuggle Puppy to her. She usually points out that the puppy has a ball when we read it but she didn't do that this time. She was sweet enough to give me a kiss at the two places in the book where I'm supposed to give her a kiss. She's such a sweetheart! Anyway, after reading the book I tried to give her the bottle but she barely opened her mouth which really weird because no matter how tired she is she is always happy to take a bottle. I still felt like her head was warm even if the ear thermometer said differently about 45 minutes before. Her body was hot too. I asked Howie to take her temperature again which he did and this time the ear thermometer said 102. We decided at this point that we should take her temperature with the rectal thermometer. That one said 103.3. We called her doctor's office and the answering service said that someone would call us in about 20 minutes. We called our parents, his said to put her into a cool bath, my mother (a former nurse) said to go to the ER. I kind of felt like since she was so out of it we should just go to the ER, which we did. When we got there her fever had gone up to 103.6. The ER doc said that her left ear was really red and he thought that it was the reason she had a fever. They gave her some Tylenol, Motrin & Amoxicillin and had us wait an hour and took her temp again. It was down to 102 and she started to perk up a tad. A half hour later the doc came back and said that we could go home once the nurse stopped by to give us a prescription for the amoxicillin. The nurse stopped by and also took Aislinn's temp one more time. It had gone down to 100. When we got home we gave her a bottle which she happily drank and then we put her down for the night. We checked on her once during the night and she seemed cool so we didn't worry too much. I got up at 6:15 am to head over to the fertility clinic for my monitoring and was back by 7:15 am. Aislinn and Howie were still sleeping so I curled back up in bed and Howie and I woke up around 9:00 am. We called her doctor and they said that we could just walk in between 9:00 and 10:00 am without an appointment. We woke Aislinn up and she was burning up again. We were going to quickly give her some Tylenol but we were all out. Yeah, I felt like an idiot! How can I not know the bottle of Tylenol is empty? How can I not have like 2 back up bottles? What kind of Mom am I? So we got her dressed and Howie made her a bottle for the car, which she pushed away. When they took her temp at the doctor's office it was 103.7 and she was barely moving again. They gave her some Motrin and the doc took a look at her ears. He said that he didn't think they looked too bad and there wasn't any fluid in there so he thought the redness was more of a symptom of the fever than the cause. Her throat was red so he took a couple of swabs to get a culture for a strep test and the quick test said it wasn't strep but they sent out the second swab just to be sure. He then wanted to rule out a UTI or kidney infection so we tried to get Aislinn to pee into a bag but she wasn't drinking any fluids so who knows how long we'd have to wait for a bit of pee, plus the pee in the bag wouldn't necessarily be sterile enough so we might have had to catheterize her in the end anyway so we just decided to let them put a catheter in so that we could get a urine sample. That was awful! I hated it and I know she hated it too. I hate bringing her in for shots but I really felt guilty about letting them poke and prod her but we needed to rule that out and it looked like the urine sample was clean. So, the next thought is that it's just some kind of virus or whatever and we just have to try to keep her fever down and get her to drink. He said we could take her home to see if maybe she'd be more willing to drink some fluids at home once her temperature went down, but if we couldn't manage that at home then we'd have to bring her to the hospital where she could get an IV. Fortunately her temperature did go down and she drank a few 5 oz bottles, had a few wet diapers, and played a lot. She also had a strawberry! She had her last bottle and fell asleep around 8:00 or 8:30 pm so I put her down in her crib. We woke her up about an hour ago for another dose of Motrin and to take her temp and it was up to 102.8. Her whole body was hot and sweaty again. We tried to give her a bottle but she refused it so we used a syringe to squirt some pedialyte into her mouth. She just seemed really tired so we let her go back to sleep and we'll just have to check on her again later. Hopefully her fever will go down and she'll be feeling better tomorrow. It's been a crazy couple of weeks for us. I just hope that our luck gets better before the end of the month. Howie gave me my first shot of Del Estrogen tonight. It wasn't too bad but I acted like a big baby until he gave me the shot. I didn't take any birth control today and oddly enough I'm not bleeding like crazy. When I'm taking the pill I bleed, when I don't take it I don't bleed. Right! That makes sense! Whatever, maybe it'll come tomorrow. We shall see.

Un-Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-09T23:06:00.003-04:00

Sadly, Howie's grandmother died this morning and the funeral is on Sunday. Howie's parent's didn't want to bury her on Mother's Day but Howie's crazy ass aunt has full control and she said she doesn't want her son to miss school so they are flying up from FL with the body, then we're going to quickly bury her and then his aunt and cousin will hop back on a plane and that will be that. I don't know, but when my grandfather died I think I was allowed to miss a day of school. I thought it was ok to take a moment to morn the loved one that you just lost. His aunt is a cold hearted bitch who basically just drained his grandmother's bank account so I'm not surprised that she and her son barely care. She broke the news to Howie's mother by leaving her a message on their answering machine saying "Mom died this morning(message was left around 5 pm)and I think the funeral is going to be on Sunday. I don't know if you want to come or not." Since she didn't get Howie's mother she then called Howie and told him that his grandmother died. In my opinion nobody should be calling the grandchild before speaking to the parent and telling them in a cold kind of way that his or her grandmother is dead. In the past year she called Howie twice to say that his grandmother was moments away from dying and then the next day she'd say "Oh, you're grandmother isn't going to die for a long, long time." Unfortunately this lady has full control over his grandmother and the money and apparently even had the will changed before his grandmother died. So, who knows what will come from that. Howie's parents are feeling really bad that this has happened on Mother's Day weekend but I'm not at all upset. Well, I mean, I'm more upset that Howie has lost his grandmother and his mother has lost her mother just as Mother's Day arrives. There's no reason for them to apologize. It's not like anyone wanted this to happen, it just is what it is. Unfortunately this isn't the only time this has happened to them. Howie's dad's mom died on Mother's Day when Howie was a kid. I think it's just another knock against Mother's Day for them. I hope that this doesn't ruin Mother's Day for Howie's mom forever. I hope that when the next Mother's Day rolls around she and the rest of the family will be able to focus on all of their good memories of his grandmother rather than on her death.

The Final Plan

2008-05-04T22:20:00.002-04:00

Hi y'all! It's been a while, I know! Last week Howie and I went down to VA for the mock transfer. The lining looks good and I asked about the light bleeding and Dr. Sunshine said that was normal and that the bleeding would eventually stop. For shits and giggles she decided to look at my ovaries. The right one is working real hard because I have 24! TWENTY-FOUR! follicles. Yes! That's two dozen follicles that will never pop out an egg. Shitty ovaries. What a tease! Anyhow, here's the timeline:

May 12: Go into CT fertility clinic for monitoring & start Del Estrogen

May 24: Go in for a lining check in the VA clinic

May 28: The Big Day! Keep fingers crossed while waiting to find out about how well Frosty defrosted and hopefully then have the transfer!

I'm oddly calm. I don't know why, but I am. I almost never take anything one day at a time, but that's what I'm doing this time. I don't want to over think it. All I have is one blastocyst and I have to believe that saving it and transferring it is worth it. So, the first hurdle is defrosting, if that goes well the next hurdle is the two week wait and the test. There's other hurdles but I'm honestly just thinking about the first one right now and that's all that matters to me.

So, enough about baby 2.0, what about our current baby? She's doing very well. She's all toddler now, not much baby is left. Well, her cheeks are still super baby kissable. She has 4 new molars and one new lateral incisor on the bottom. The tantrums are more frequent but she is really good at giving herself a timeout when she needs to regain her composure. Howie and I got her a little ATV for 12-36 month olds. She seems to really like it and it keeps her away from our neighbors' kid's four wheeler. It's so nice that the weather is getting warmer because I think Aislinn and I were getting cabin fever. Sometimes you need to get out and run around barefoot in the grass. Aislinn's favorite outdoor activity is picking dandelions. Luckily we have many so it's unlikely that we'll be running out anytime soon. We're really looking forward to taking her back down to VA. Our old co-workers haven't seen Aislinn in a year. I really miss everyone in my old office, specifically my former boss. She's like family and part of me wishes that we were raising Aislinn down there so that they could see Aislinn grow. I feel like I shared every other significant event in my adult life with them and when I finally got pregnant I up and left before you could even see the bump. I have always been torn between CT and VA, I doubt it'll ever end.

More About My Dysfunctional Body

2008-04-16T02:09:00.003-04:00

So, I called my ob/gyn, Dr. Hot Stuff to tell her that the birth control wasn't exactly working 100%. I also called Nurse Killjoy. Dr. Hot Stuff's nurse called to say that I need to talk to my fertility doc, Dr. Sunshine, about my blood-gushing uterus because they don't want to tell me to do something that Dr. Sunshine wouldn't agree with. I totally understand but I called her because she told me to call her if the Yaz doesn't stop my period. Nurse Killjoy didn't call back today but I assume it's because she's waiting to get a response back from Dr. Sunshine before she tells me what the plan is. No matter what the plan is I know it's going to have to include the new fertility doc up here (we'll call him Dr. Newby for now) because I'm going to his clinic for the monitoring. However, I'm not officially a patient of theirs yet so I can't just wander in there begging them to PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE take a look at my uterus with the dildo cam and then give me something to make the bleeding stop. I have no idea why I'd bleed for two months straight while on birth control. My mom is a nurse and she seems pretty concerned about that. I usually convince myself that I have some kind of cancer in these situations, since Dr. Google hasn't given me any indication that it could be cancer I'm starting to convince myself that I'll end up needing a hysterectomy. This is what happens when I'm left up to my own devices. I just need someone to fix me or calm me down. It would be nice if someone just shook me and gave me a good smack across the face. Anyway, I'm sure I'm crazy and that I'm fine, I'm sure by tomorrow I'll be at peace again. My acupuncturist... I really need another name for her. I can't think of one so I just used the Hobbit Name Generator and it gave me Ivy Knotwise. So, let's just go with Ivy. Anyway, Ivy gave me a nice hardcore treatment on Saturday and sent me home with a bottle of herbs in tea pill form. I take 24 of the tea pills a day. I don't know, maybe it's working. It did look like my period was slowing down a few hours ago but sometimes it does that at night. I don't know. Tomorrow I could be having early labor pain type cramps and bleeding heavily again. I wish I knew what to expect.

I'm still worrying about Frosty. I'm starting to think that we should just go into debt and try to get a loan to make some fresh embryos. We could take frosty and a fresh embryo and put both in. If we're going to pay for a transfer, the drugs, and the monitoring why not go all the way? I know it's more but just doing the FET is expensive for something that has a low probability of working. My feeling is that if we're going to put an ass load of money down on making a baby we might as well go all the way and give ourselves the best chance we can. The whole thing has my stomach in knots. I know I need to focus on not getting stressed out. Maybe I should start going back to yoga? They have yoga for all the infertile stressed out ladies at the clinic up here. They have acupuncture too but I'm already seeing Ivy and I'm kind of attached to her now. I need to just calm the hell down.... and get some sleep. On that note I should get going. Night night!

FET: 5.26.08

2008-04-14T21:10:00.002-04:00

We heard from Nurse Killjoy today. It's looking like May 26th is the date for our FET. I so badly want Frosty to set up camp for the next 9 months. I LOVE being pregnant and I want this baby. Frosty is a fighter so lets hope for the best.

I don't know if my body will be ready though. I am still bleeding. WTF? It's not super heavy but it needs to stop already. I'm soooooooo tired and I'm soooo worried that it's not going to work. I'm going to try to see my acupuncturist twice a week so that maybe my body will properly behave. We're still trying to sort things out with the fertility clinic here so that I can go in for monitoring. It's really complicated and I'm worried that something will get screwed up. I'm really stressed about that, stressed about my period, stressed about pretty much the whole process. I just want things to be simplified. Last time things were no problem at all.

Anyway, I guess that's the only update since yesterday. I'll keep all y'all posted.

Thinking About the Process

2008-04-13T23:35:00.005-04:00

So, I've had my period for TWO MONTHS!!! I've been on birth control for a month but it barely made a difference in the flow. When I got to the sugar pills at the end of the pack the bleeding got so bad that I was going through a super absorbent tampon and heavily bleeding onto one of those giant pads every hour. The cramps on Thursday night and all day on Friday were as painful as early labor. My doctor gave me some stronger birth control and then went to see my acupuncturist on Saturday morning. I'm still bleeding now but it's not quite as strong... at the moment.

I also spoke to my fertility nurse, formally known as Nurse Killjoy. She is scheduling my mock transfer and FET. She's going to call me back this week to give me the dates. With this insane period that stops for nothing I'm pretty worried about the transfer. Our insurance is completely useless so this ONE frozen embryo is all we have. I don't know if we're really going to have enough money to ever go through a fresh cycle again. We have to put our money towards buying a home in a town with better schools for Aislinn, eventually we're going to need a new car, and just saving money would be super awesome. Aislinn may want to go to college someday. Part of me has forgotten how unpredictable and how disappointing this process can be. Somewhere in my head I'm thinking it's a sure thing. I mean, I got pregnant with Aislinn so of course this embryo will stick, of course I'll see that little flickering heartbeat on the ultrasound, sure I'll safely make it to the second trimester and absolutely we'll have a healthy baby sometime early next year. I have to remind myself that we are lucky to have Aislinn. I can't just forget about the 3 failed IUIs and the two babies that we lost before we finally succeeded. The odds of this working out aren't great. I'm back to that place where I have to constantly remind myself of the difference in having faith that things will work out and just being stupidly overly optimistic. I hate the head games that I play with myself during the two week wait. If I am lucky enough to end up pregnant there is only a brief moment of happiness because I need to remind myself that I still have to take this one step at a time. That it's not as easy as getting one positive pregnancy test, I have to get three and then we have to be sure that there's a little heartbeat a couple of weeks later. The next hurdle is getting past the 12th week, and then the 20th. I so resent the fact that getting pregnant is such a process and that if and when I get pregnant the first half of it will be spent trying to keep the excitement in until I know for sure that the pregnancy is legit. I can't believe that some people out there have fun trying to get pregnant and some people get to feel like the positive sign on a pee stick actually equals a real live baby in 9 months. I should also remind myself that I'm still lucky/blessed that I have had the chance to experience pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. I'm lucky that I had any embryos left over for a FET and for now I guess I'm going to just try to have faith that this will result in a viable pregnancy and later a real living healthy baby. Just keep your fingers, toes, arms & legs crossed for us.

Frosty the Snow Embryo

2008-03-21T02:23:00.002-04:00

It's been over two weeks since the red wave hit and it is just ending now. I had my annual appointment with my ob/gyn scheduled for this past Monday. In order to cancel it in time I'd have to call on Friday. I didn't know if it would stop over the weekend because it seemed to be slowing down temporarily so I didn't cancel. I should have because it was flowing full force by Monday and I knew they wouldn't be able to do a proper pap smear. It was too late to cancel so I figured I'd go in and get some birth control anyway. They nurse asked me to pee in a cup before the appointment and ran off around the corner before I could tell her I was having my period and it was going to be a really gross pee sample. So I went ahead into the bathroom to basically fill up a cup of super red pee. So gross! I wrapped my hand around the cup so that people passing in the hallway wouldn't think that I just poured blood from a small dead animal into the cup. When the nurse showed me into the exam room I told her that I was still having my period and that I didn't cancel because I thought my period would be over by then and that the pee sample was a mess and all. She took my sample and actually shouted "Oh come on!" at me. Yes, thank you Nurse Bitch! She went on about how there's no way they can do a pap smear and I should have rescheduled and that this was a waste of time and shit. I couldn't believe she was so rude. I had never been talked to like that in this office and I was coming in once a week since I was 30 weeks pregnant, twice a week for the last month or so. I told her that when I scheduled the appointment I didn't know I'd suddenly get my period since I had only had it once since I gave birth and that even before I was pregnant I never knew when my period was coming and how long it would stay once it was here. Even during a period it slows down and then gets heavy and then slows down, it went back and forth so I never knew when it was truly about to stop. I explained that I needed to see Dr. Hot Stuff to get some birth control before I bothered to reschedule. I mean, my period can last a month or two and then sometimes it surprises me with just 2 weeks. I don't know. I already feel like a malfunctioning machine, I don't need some bitchy nurse treating me like some stupid freak. Maybe I'm a little extra sensitive about it because I'm all hormonal. Whatever. So she went out in the hall and I could hear her talking to Dr. Hot Stuff about how I came in with my period and that she told me that I can't get a pap smear during my period and that this could only be a birth control consultation. Dr. Hot Stuff just calmly and politely said "Ok! It's fine. It's not a problem." and then entered the room. She was nice, as always, and asked about Aislinn and chatted for a second then we talked about my PCOS and birth control and my plans for Frosty. I told her I just needed a regular pill, monthly cycle pill, for the next few months. She had free samples of ortho tri-cyclen lo and just sent me home with a bunch of those. Awesome, I don't have to spend money on bc! I know I'd have to start that to be ready for the frozen embryo transfer anyway so it's all good.

So, on to Frosty. I spoke to my old fertility doc, what hell did I used to call her? Dr. Sunshine? I think that was it. So I called the fertility office and asked if they could give her a message that I called. Less than an hour later she called back. She explained what the procedure would be and was happy that I had just started birth control. She said I'd have to go down there for a mock transfer and then again for the real transfer. She said that they wouldn't know how the embryo looked after defrosting until the day of transfer since that's when they defrost it. She explained that frozen embryos have a 70-80% chance of surviving after being frozen and that they have a pregnancy rate of 30-40%. I know those odds look bad with only one embryo to work with but she's optimistic because things with Aislinn and she said that it was a good embryo. One of my friends here in CT that has PCOS was all negative about us bothering to try with just one embryo. She also bothered to tell me one time that I should remember that it's not really a living thing yet and that I shouldn't think of it like it is one. I can't help but think of it that way. I mean, I'm not a crazy right wing super christian that is against abortion because "life begins at conception". I don't want it to sound like that's what I'm saying because if I were raped I might feel different. But this embryo is a life to me, it's a life that my husband and I made... with the help of some other people. LOL! We tried so hard to create this little embryo and no matter how things turn out, a piece of me and a piece of Howie came together and made something - the beginning of a little person. I loved all of our little embryos from the moment we heard about them and I was routing for all 5 (or was it 6) to survive. I was never planning on having 5 or 6 kids but suddenly I was thinking, they're ours! OURS! We made them! I want to give them all a chance. I want to give Frost a chance, that's it. Why did we make him/her if we never wanted to give it a chance.

The only trouble now is the insurance. I don't know how it'll work. If we had the same insurance I guess a frozen transfer wouldn't be a problem because they invested in the creation of this embryo as well. Now we're in a new state with different laws and new insurance. They might say we're required to do 4 IUIs and 4 IVF cycles before we transfer Frosty but that's craziness. I think starting with an embryo we already have could save them money and perhaps with a letter from the doc to the insurance company and maybe some more back and forth we might be able to do it. I'm not going to keep my ONE embryo frozen for much longer. That's crazy! I need to transfer this thing and if I did get pregnant with the IUIs and IVFs that they REQUIRE then I'll never get around to defrosting Frosty. I just want to see how things go with that before moving on. So, I don't know, maybe we'll have to pay for it. Howie and I agree that we want to give Frosty a chance and we are both optimistic even if people think the odds suck. I don't care.

So, I guess we need to talk to the finance department at the fertility clinic and in about 4 weeks I'm going to head down to VA for a mock transfer and then we'll move forward from there. I can do monitoring at a fertility clinic in CT where Dr. Sunshine has a fertility friend. If Frosty doesn't work out then I'll be hooked up with a new clinic. If things with the insurance work out then we're hoping to do the transfer sometime in May! That would make the due date in February. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

I've Finally Been Hit By The Big Red Wave

2008-03-07T14:11:00.008-05:00

Yes, it's true! My period has arrived and it's not too bad... so far. I don't want to jinx it. It isn't heavy like it used to be and my cramps are barely there. Now, my flow may be lighter but I'm still hating the super low flow bitches that can wear those insanely small panty liners. I love my sister-in-law but she's one of those lucky bitches that only need a panty liner. WTF, if that's how light your flow is you might as well just wear some black underwear for the 3 days you have your period and just wash your underwear at the end of the day. Anyway, I was sooooo excited about getting my period that I emailed my acupuncturist last night to let her know.

The detox is going well. The first week I cut down on some things I'll be giving up next week and I take two packets of detoxification support packets. They protect my liver and whatnot during the detox. Yesterday was my first day and I was pretty good, excluding my Mommy's Night Out dinner. All the mommy's from the playgroup go out once a month (I could go for more) and we relax with a few drinks and some yummy food. Last night we went to P.F. Changs. Sooooo good. We got the Changs chicken lettuce wraps, steamed veggie dumplings, kung pao chicken, mu shu chicken, mongolian beef, singapore street noodles, and the dan dan noodles. They were all fucking awesome! The food there is sooo good anyway, but food always tastes better when you don't have a toddler to feed and entertain. You get to eat slowly and converse with adults without interruption. I also had a couple of drinks and was feeling REALLY good and relaxed - I was thinking of going home and getting it on with Howie. Sadly this was the time that my period arrived. Maybe relaxing a bit with friends helped things along too. Back to the detox though, I started my day off with a frozen gluten free blueberry waffle. Aislinn had one too. We both love them! We eat them dry, no butter or syrup. For lunch I had a spring mix salad with just garlic olive oil. I would have put some nuts or seeds or something fun on it but I forgot to buy some at the store. It's all good. I also had an apple on the side. I'm drinking water like mad crazy. I think I'm still hyped enough to not be missing the things I'm not eating too much. I know it'll be harder later but then it'll get easier again.

Well, it's time for me to hurry up and take a quick nap before Aislinn wakes. My period always makes me sleepy and useless. Before I go, I was asked to post some pics of Aislinn so here they are!

Mmmmm! Birthday cake!

Playing with some streamers.

These streamers really are a lot of fun!

Hopefully Bren doesn't mind that I've posted this pic :) It's just a cute pic.

I so badly want to put her hair in pigtails that I gave her antennae.

"Ok, I let you play with my hair. Can you just let me text my friends in peace?"

Having fun in the snow!

Welcoming Daddy home.

Feeding baby a bottle on her mini-boppy while sitting on her mini-couch.

Oh... and I just want to say CONGRATULATIONS! to Les who just gave birth to her baby boy today!!! I am soooooo happy for her. She has been waiting a long time to have this little baby and he will be very loved.

A Different Kind of Spring Cleaning

2008-03-05T21:54:00.002-05:00

I went to my nutritionist today for the first time in a month. Aislinn came along with me. I packed a grilled cheese sandwich, some crackers, a banana, some water & milk along with a handful of toys. She behaved the whole time which is super fabulous! They love her there, but how could you not love her? She's the most wonderful, gorgeous little girl... well... she is to me but I know that I am bias. Anyway, the nutritionist - I have to have a name for her other than "my nutritionist". I'll think about that and update you when the decision has been made. So, as I was saying, my nutritionist and I talked about how I need to lose some massive weight by June when Howie and I are hoping to go in and have Frosty transferred. I'm in a good place mentally and emotionally thanks to Eckhart Tolle and Oprah so I'm ready to get serious about weight loss. She suggested that I start a 28 day detox tomorrow. I thought about it for a few moments and then agreed. There was a woman on the detox that also has PCOS, she hasn't lost weight in 10 years but on this detox she lost 14 lbs. in 28 days! Oh, AND she got her period!!! So, I boarded that train in hopes it'll rock my world too. My nutritionist and my acupuncturist had a little powwow about me later this afternoon about me being on a detox. My acupuncturist is going to get my ass on some rockin' herbs that will make my uterus behave and possibly my ovaries too. And by herbs I don't mean wacky-tabacky, although I do smell like I've been smokin' up after the sessions where she uses moxa on me. Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the detox, the herbs and needling & reading some more chapters of A New Earth.

Aislinn is still working on pushing through some teeth somewhere in her mouth. She seems to completely come unglued at 7 pm, if not before. Other than that she's so happy. She is so cute and she is sooooo smart! I can't believe how big she is. A couple of days ago when we were at Mommy & Me I noticed that her walk was different and at first I thought "why is she walking so strangely?" but then I realize that her walk wasn't strange, it was more like a real walk. She is starting to walk like a little person rather than a baby. Unbelievable! She loves walking around outside and she doesn't get tired! We could be out for 30 - 45 minutes and she's still full of energy. It's nice having a little walking buddy. She is too flippin' cute. I can't believe Howie and I made such a perfect little person!

Relay for Life!

2008-03-03T01:01:00.003-05:00

Tonight I'm not blogging about the many adventures of Mommyhood or my raging baby fever. Instead this entry is about the Relay for Life. My new friends - the moms in my playgroup - are all signed up and ready to participate in the Relay for Life. Here's a little bit of info from the American Cancer Society about the Relay:

Relay For Life is an overnight event that brings our community together to help support the American Cancer Society and its lifesaving mission to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. The Society works hard every day to prevent cancer and save lives by supporting groundbreaking research, affecting public policies that protect us from cancer, and educating people on how to prevent or detect cancer early. Thanks to our hardworking advocates, all six New England states now have comprehensive statewide clearn indoor air statutes.

The Society helps people with cancer by providing free rides to and from treatment, free wigs, retreats for cancer patients and their families, and a hotline manned by cancer information specialists. By calling 1-800-ACS(227)-2345, anytime, day or night, 365 days a year, people can get answers to their questions about cancer and everything related to it.

Our efforts at Relay For Life can help the American Cancer Society to keep working toward a cancer-free future.

This is my first year participating in the Relay for Life but I have many people to walk for. I walk for my mother-in-law who is a colon cancer survivor. Thankfully she is still with us and doing well. I'm also walking for a former co-worker of mine who found out not long ago that she has stage 4 lung cancer. I think about her and her family everyday and it breaks my heart that they have to go through this. I'm also relaying to remember all the people that my family, my friends, and I have lost to cancer. The ACS estimates that cancer will take the lives of over 500,000 people this year. Small children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, friends, best friends! I don't know all of these people and their families but I will be relaying for their lives.

If anyone out there in the blogosphere is interested in making a donation to support me and my team you can do so by visiting my personal page. Thank you.

Dear Blogger, I was crazy! Don't let tired people blog. Hugs & Kisses, Amy

2008-02-29T21:32:00.004-05:00

Blogger should require bloggers to prove that they aren't sleep deprived before they blog in order to prevent crazy ass entries like my last one. Maybe I should go to my acupuncturist twice a week to get some help with my sleeping habits. I always sleep better after a treatment, the rest of the time I lay awake thinking WAY too much. Doesn't matter how tired I am, I still obsess over anything that comes to mind and before I know it it's 4:00 AM.

Yes, it's not exactly early now but my head is slightly more clear. My head is always clear on Friday night. I can stay up late, the hubby is home and I know that he is here to make coffee and omelettes, to feed and play with Aislinn while I get to relax by having needles stuck in me. It's sweet. So the cramping, the sleepiness, the intense acid reflux, crying for no real reason.... pregnancy? ovarian cancer? I no longer think so. I'm pretty sure that it's just my angry old uterus getting sick of holding on to all of it's thick, heavy, useless lining. It's getting ready for a major purge but it's lazy and it takes it awhile to get going. I've been peeing on pee sticks like I have nothing else to do and they all laughed at me as the big NEGATIVE sign popped up in that little window. Damn pee sticks! The plan is to see my acupuncturist tomorrow for a hardcore session of needling. Hopefully I'll be getting hit with the big red wave soon. By now it has probably worked it's way up to being a big red tsunami.

On the baby fever front we're planning to make plans. Very exciting! I have an appointment with Dr. Hot Stuff on March 17th! Happy St. Patrick's Day to my unlucky charms. I'm expecting to receive some birth control and I will ask for the CA-125 blood test so that I can sleep at night. We will also discuss defrosting Frosty and all that good stuff. I'm already decorating Aislinn's "big girl" room in my head and redecorating the nursery for Frosty... but I know I should slow down because this whole process is unpredictable. I will hold off on any major design plans until I am good and pregnant.

Howie & Amy +1 and Late Night Talks with Dr. Google

2008-02-28T02:09:00.004-05:00

So, earlier this week I was trying to catch up on all the Oprah shows on the dvr and there was Jon & Kate + 8. For those of you who don't know WTF I'm talking about you should check out the link. It's this couple who say they are considered a "fertility nightmare". They had trouble producing (know what that's like) so they did an IUI and had twin girls. Sweet! Then she had baby fever and begged the hubby to have another because she wanted to know what it would be like to have ONE baby at a time. They did another IUI and she had a litter of 6. So now there are EIGHT kids in the house and she is my new hero because even though she has a few people over to help she's still an amazing super mom with a clean house and still finds time to be a hot mom. I feel so fat and lazy and messy when I watch them on tv. So, now I'm obsessed with them and have to watch them on TLC (they're on Discovery & TLC... I think... or did I somehow stumble upon Discovery?) Now that I sat here and watched this couple deal with the 8 kids and even take them on a trip to Disney World I have become insanely motivated around here. I can't have a messy house if theirs is clean, and they read the 100 emails they get every day. I am still only responding to email here and there and even have some unread email going back to when Aislinn was just a month old. So embarrassing! I suck. And I think they blog! I quit blogging for months. I need to get my ass in gear! So, I have been cleaning around here like I'm Monica Gellar on Friends. It's not perfect yet, but we're getting there. I also started to read that book I think I mentioned in the last post, but if not here you go. I'm reading Oprah's new book club selection A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and I'm going to take the web class thingy that she's doing. It's a great book and it is an awakening like Oprah and all her celeb friends claim it is and I LOVE it. So I recommend it, and I recommend watching Jon & Kate + 8. They're funny and you will enjoy it.

On to why the holy hell I'm up at 2:30 AM. I was going to bed earlier but I was laying in bed wondering about something my mother-in-law keeps bringing up and why the fuck I'm cramping, feeling sick, the back pain, all the gas & acid reflux. So I ran downstairs to consult Dr. Google and now I'm starting to spazz out a tad but lucky the Sandman is taking over and telling me to get my ass to bed so I will quickly confide in you, my lovely blogosphere friends. First of all, I will admit that my relationship with my MIL hasn't been the most fab and she often rides my ass about everything because if she isn't riding someone about something she might just explode (part of things I'm trying to deal with and learn to love her regardless of her bitchiness) but I do believe that this time her intentions are good and I know when it comes to this she genuinely cares. She had colon cancer a few years back and won her fight with it (YAY!) so now she is very big on cancer prevention and she whole heartedly believes in having any test you can to be sure nothing funky is growing inside of you. I can't blame her and I agree. Catching it early is pretty much key. So anyway, she's discovered this blood test that anyone can have to find out if you have ovarian cancer, CA-125. I guess it's expensive but if it can save your life who cares, right? I have no problem doing it but I'm waiting for our new insurance cards in the mail (any day now) and then I will be sure to get into see Dr. Hot Stuff and ask for the blood test. So, anyway she mentions that I need to be tested like all the time, every time I see her. Oy! I will, I will! So, I'm laying in bed with these weird cramps and strange back pain that isn't a result of the cramps (usually it is when it's menstrual cramping) and serious nausea. I'm not knocked up because I've nearly been peeing on a stick everyday. I start to think about how PCOS and ovarian cancer are loosely linked and I start to wonder if I've got cancer all over my ovaries. So I obsess and I obsess and I decide that there's no falling asleep next to Howie and all his snoring so I might as well ask Dr. Google what the symptoms are and unfortunately I've got them, HOWEVER those symptoms can go with anything. Perhaps my fluffy uterus is working up to expelling it's 3-4 months worth of lining, who knows. I don't know. I'm probably freaking myself out but I was laying in bed thinking of how awful it would be to miss out on Aislinn's life. She's amazing and how I LOVE our closeness. She is my sweet little love bug. I can't imagine being too sick to flip her upside down and run around together. I love the way she laughs when I toss her onto the couch and play peek-a-boo with her from behind the pillows. Even worse than being too sick to do that would be to just not be here with her at all. I have to stop thinking like that now. Even if I do have some sort of cancer growing on my ovaries it would likely be quite new. I mean, with all the ovary watching during fertility treatments and the fact that I had ultrasounds done too look at my uterus and ovaries after I gave birth to Aislinn I'm sure it would have been caught then. I have to just calm down and get the blood test done and probably get my crazy ass back in birth control because exposing my body to high levels of testosterone and estrogen isn't helping me. I can work on getting my health together naturally and then when I have that under control I can come off the birth control but in the meantime I think I need to be on it. I have to anyway to get my cycle back on schedule because if I am all healthy and good we're hoping to maybe defrost Frosty for a possibly transfer in June maybe. Just a thought.

Ok, my thoughts are probably all out of whack from my intense sleepiness at this point so I should go.

Baby Fever

2008-02-21T16:02:00.003-05:00

Yes, baby fever. Babies seem to be popping up around me everywhere, or maybe I'm starting to notice pregnant people and itty bitty powdery smelling babies again. I don't know but the baby fever is intense. I'm dying to get knocked up again. I miss being pregnant, even being sick and having to sleep sitting up for 4 months. I loved feeling Aislinn moving around inside of me. I loved getting to know her like that before she was born. I also miss the smallness of a new born. The thing I want the most is for our family to grow and for Aislinn to be a big sister. I know she would be a wonderful big sister. She is so sweet and so gentle with others. She likes to pat the other kids at playgroup on the back or hold their hands and today she even fed one of the other kids cherios. She has a baby doll and while she sometimes drops her on her head she also likes to take her out of her cradle and feed her a bottle. She's going to be an amazing big sister. I think the baby fever is so bad that my head is starting to play games on me. Lately my boobs have been hurting, I've been nauseated on and off, car sick for sure, tired, and yesterday I started to cry in the car for no good reason. I doubt that my dysfunctional ovaries miraculously popped out an egg around the same time that one of my husband's unmotivated tadpoles actually swam up and then the two actually bumped into each other and had the energy left to unite. That alone would be amazing, but it would be unbelievable if that adorable little embryo snuggled up with the wall of my uterus and set up camp. I'd love that but it seems so unlikely. I really can't believe there are people out there that just have to have sex to have a baby. I wish it was that simple for me. Anyway, I bought a bunch of pee sticks and so far the pee sticks have told me that my uterus is a barren and cold place. No baby in sight. It's crazy because I've nearly broken down and sobbed like 3 times today and the last time I was like that I had a bun in the oven. Oh well, what can you do? Someday soon we'll take frosty out of the freezer and see if there's any frost bite.

Hello Again!

2008-02-15T15:58:00.003-05:00

So, it's been a while. I was going to give up on blogging... scratch that... I had given up on blogging. Life with a little one has been busy and it has been hard to manage the rest of my life. I guess I'm just not that good at balancing life, but I'm working on it. I thought about creating another blog with a different name because maybe I didn't always want to talk about my lazy ovaries, however, I think my lazy ovaries are tied to other challenges in my life so maybe it is a good name for my blog. Who knows, but here I am. I missed putting my thoughts and feelings down and if you want to read that's great, and if you don't that's fine too. I just need an outlet.

Aislinn is 12 1/2 months old now. Yup, she's 1!!! She's smart, strong and beautiful. We love her and everything she does. She took her first step right before Thanksgiving but didn't get the hang of it until a day after Christmas. Now she runs around and talks and laughs and plays. She has full tantrums and she also gives the best kisses. She always dances when she hears music and claps when she finishes something she worked really hard at. She is absolutely the love of my life and she loves me back.

Howie is going back to work in NYC. He'll be making more money, not a crazy amount, but we should be able to pay our bills and save some cash too. He's going to be working with his father, groomed to take over his dad's job. His dad is the president so someday we hope to live comfortably. Right now I'm looking forward to someday moving out of this tiny itty bitty condo. With Aislinn and her toys and our furniture there just isn't any room. Not even for things that I'd like to use, like muffin pans and wine glasses. A average size house that is NOT attached to another home would be great. I mean, Aislinn can take out her shape sorter and dump the shapes on the floor and then take out her Little People Noah's Ark and suddenly the whole living room/dining room/office area is totally trashed. The whole being attached to other homes is an issue because while I LOOOOOVEEE my fabulous neighbors I don't love their cigarette smoke. Perhaps they don't mind the possibility of lung cancer but I would not like that for myself or my family. I can't ask them to not smoke in their home but it's leaking into our house. It's gross! The other thing is that I can hear them talking, vacuuming, music, showering & running up and down the stairs. We try to not hear other things they may like to do. The other day I was giving Aislinn a bath and I swore that I heard someone walking around in our house and then I could hear someone running up the stairs and even felt the vibrations in the floor but it was actually my neighbor! WTF? Not their fault it's just that it's a shitty condo. So, we'll just hope that we'll be able to buy a house someday soon.

Me? I'm still seeing a nutritionist and going to acupuncture. Each week I go to Mommy & Me and we also have a play group. It's nice. Aislinn absolutely gets to socialize and so do I. I'm trying to work through some emotional issues, nothing earth shattering but I think I just haven't focused on my inner self in a while and now there's plenty of spring cleaning to do. I have decided to take part in Oprah's online class and read Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. I need to get reading because the class starts pretty soon.

So that's about all there is now. I hope to be back soon so check in every once in a while... or not... it's up to you.

Teething

2007-10-09T00:20:00.000-04:00

Last week Aislinn cut her first tooth. A day later a second popped out, number three and number four popped out on Monday. Within a week she went from that adorable baby gummy smile to 4 teeth!!! Believe me, she's cute teeth or not but my heart broke because suddenly my tiny little baby is growing up and her cute gummy smile is gone. It's replaced with an equally cute jack-o-lantern type smile which I also love. I guess that's part of being a parent. You're excited to see them grow up but you sometimes feel sad that they have to grow up so quickly. I'm never ready for the changes. The first tooth to come in was her upper left lateral incisor, the the upper right lateral incisor (the two teeth next to the two front teeth). Then with no warning the bottom middle two teeth popped up. Unless her upper front two teeth pop up she'll have a perfect space on top for her bottom two teeth to fit between her upper lateral incisors. That's why I call it her Jack-o-Lantern style smile.

I guess I should get you caught up on other things. On September 30th Howie and I went to the awful final Mets game with Aislinn. The Mets played horribly but Aislinn was super cute all dressed up in her Mets cheerleader outfit complete with socks and a hat. She was way cute, too bad she wasn't representing a better team. Oh well! Going to a baseball game with a baby wasn't as bad as I thought it wold be. She slept for 2 hours in the loud stadium, as did the Mets and most of the fans. She also had a two bottles and some strawberry banana puffs. YUM!!

Mommy & Me is going well. We graduated to the larger class with older kids because there weren't any babies in the class that Aislinn should have been in. She stands and "cruises" so she does well in the older class. It's hard to bond with the mom's though because they have this intense bond over the fact that their kids are all 10 months old and somehow to their surprise the kids birthdays are so close to one another. Wow! No shit? Your babies are all 10 months old and you say that all of their birthdays are around the same time?! I would have NEVER guessed that! Whatever, I kind of want to meet other moms and they kind of chat with me when Aislinn crawls over to their kids to play or their kid comes to play with mine but they always somehow seem to all end up in this little circle near the cheese mat to talk about how it's so cool that their kids birthdays all fall within this two week span. Bleh. Good luck going to all of those 1st birthday parties when you have your own to throw, bitches! FINALLY this week we met the one other mother who has an 8 month old daughter. I was so excited, not because I need to meet another mom who gave birth within two weeks of when I gave birth but because I clearly need to have a click of my own in order to make friends. The mom seems a bit shy and kind of worried that everyone thinks her daughter is huge for 8 months old. I don't know if she is or not, everyone says Aislinn is tiny for her age but I think she looks normal. Who really cares? Even if you ended up having the biggest baby in the U.S., who cares? Her daughter is absolutely gorgeous and to me she doesn't look freakishly huge. She's bigger than Aislinn but she doesn't look like a giant. HOPEFULLY she'll keep coming and we can form our own little group. Aislinn is making friends faster than I am though. She's very cute and silly when she's there. She likes to socialize with the kids and the Moms seem to like her too, they just aren't into Moms who gave birth during the month of January. Perhaps if I gave birth at the end of November or beginning of December I'd be ok. Enough complaining about that.

Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of when Howie and I got married. Hopefully I'll be able to get a haircut before our "date" tomorrow night. If we were in Hollywood we'd already be celebrating our RUBY anniversary, but we're not so this is actually flowers if you are traditional and linen or silk if your more modern. I guess you could combine them by getting a floral printed linen or silk item. Howie isn't much of a flower/linen/silk sorta guy so I don't think I'm going to worry about the gift. We're going out to dinner which is almost as exciting as going away on vacation for us. If we're lucky Aislinn will be asleep when we get home so that we can get it on when his parents leave. SWEET!!!

My Appointment with the Bobble Head

2007-09-21T15:53:00.000-04:00

I had an appointment with my nutritionist today. By the way, I need a more interesting nickname for her, "L" doesn't do it. Can we call her Bobble Head because her head is disproportionately larger than her body. Ok, so during my appointment with Bobble Head I discovered that I have lost over 15" over my entire body. Not 15" from my waist but if you add up all the inches I lost from my neck, arm, upper & middle chest, ribs, waist, hips, abdomen, thigh & knee. I lost 3 1/2 -THREE AND A HALF- inches from my abdomen!!!!!!! Wooohoooo! Ok, but in pounds it's only 8 3/4 lbs. Not bad though. I was cranky when I left the house but after blasting Timbaland's "Scream" in the car and then finding out that I am in fact smaller I am now in a much better mood. Perhaps I will start to get up early in the morning to go for a run before my husband goes to work. LOL! We'll see about that. Anyway, after my appointments with Bobble Head I tend to feel like I should reward myself with a tiny cheat so I head over to Starbucks. Look, I know that rewarding yourself with food should be a no-no. I know that I should be rewarding myself with non-food things like a facial, mani/pedi, or a bubble bath but I don't have the cash to spend on a facial or mani/pedi and the bubble bath? When? By the time my little peanut is asleep I'm not interested in "relaxing" in a bubble bath. AND how can it be relaxing in the smaller-than-average-tub? It's customized small! No, seriously! I'm short but not that short. Whatever, anyway. So if I feel that having a tall skim decaf pumpkin spice latte after getting weighed I think it's ok. Someday when I'm rich I will HAPPILY spend the day at the spa when I reach my goal weight. How's that sound? Anyway, I'm at Starbucks to pick up my tall skim decaf pumpkin spice latte and as I'm walking in the door I'm holding the door for the woman behind me. Not stopping to hold it open, just passing off the open door. This BITCH! Personal trainer from New York Sports Club chatting on her freaking cell pushes past me and barely gets out an "oh thanks" and walks up to the counter. AS IF I WAS THE DOOR LADY AND AS IF I WASN'T THERE FIRST!!!! Apparently she frequents this Starbucks location more than I do and is treated like a queen. She walks up to the counter and everyone is all bowing to her and all "Oh! Hi Holy One!" and while chit chatting on her phone and barely looking at anyone there she extends her arm and flicks her starbucks card in the cashier's face. The barista quickly makes her coffee and the cashier swipes her card and she sort of glances at the guy and gives him a nod like "Good Dog! If I had a treat I'd throw it to you!" and then wonders off to the pick-up area. I kind of wanted to shove her and start a playground type fight in the middle of the place but I instead ordered a VENTI pumpkin spice latte with WHIP! How's that for fixing your inner frustration with food? It's ok, I don't always do that, just this time because I was hoping to catch up with her in the parking lot and "trip" so that my HOT latte would go flying all over her. By the time my latte was made I realized that she's the kind of bitch that has her lawyer in her top five and would have sued me for all the money I don't have. The judge would end up making me be her maid.

My parents brought my niece's old walker for Aislinn to play with today. She LOVES it but seems to only know how to walk backwards in it. It kind of pisses her off when she knows she wants to walk to me but ends up going in the other direction. What can you do? She just woke up from her 3 hour nap and is very chatty. I should probably go get her and stop writing.

Look I'm Posting! Alert the Media!

2007-09-18T23:57:00.000-04:00

What? It's been TWO months you say? The last time I posted a lot was going on in our lives and I just needed some time away. Things are getting better, not good or great, but better. While I LOVE New England, LOVE CT, I don't know that leaving VA has been worth it yet. That being said I still have faith that things will all work out and I will eventually see that this was what was best for us. Howie has a job but it pays a lot less than his last job but pays more than unemployment. Right before Howie was offered his new job I freaked out and decided to look into doing direct sales to make money NOW! I'm making WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less than I used to make but if I got an office job outside the home and had to pay for daycare I would barely be bringing any money home at all. I'm over qualified based on my work experience but under qualified based on my education. Whatever! I'm starting to panic a bit. Ugh! I mean, we're barely staying afloat right now even after my mom lent us a bunch of cash. Stupid freaking commons charges and stupid crappy condo! This whole condo complex we live in is sucking us dry and it's not even worth $5 a month. Anyway, I owe my former employer for health insurance because I barely worked during my last month of employment so the insurance isn't free. Then I have to pay COBRA for a month. We have yet to receive that bill but I really can't wait. Because we really have thousands of dollars laying around to pay for that.

I had been going to a nutritionist, acupuncture and yoga to help with my PCOS. The nutritionist takes credit card and my mom thought it was important for me to go so she paid for that. My nutritionist, "L", also offered to be my mentor while I'm in school... maybe someday I can work for her. Who knows! My acupuncturist, "S", is awesome! I love her! She doesn't take any shit from my uterus. I had my period for like 2 1/2 weeks at one point and then she laid down the law with my dysfunctional baby-maker. She stuck a couple of needles in my toes and the next day it stopped. My period returned a week or so later and went on for about 8 days and she broke out some smokeless herb and did something around my feet and the next day it stopped. I had a cold and she tapped in a couple of needles on either side of my nose to relieve my stuffing nose and then I flipped over so that she could do some cupping on my back which cleared up my lungs. Later that day I was feeling better! I love her and I can't imagine living without her now but she takes checks and my mom can't legally give me anymore money so it looks like I have to give up acupuncture. Yoga, well, I paid for four classes. I've only been to one so far but after the next three I won't be able to buy anymore because she only takes checks too. Yoga lady rocks the shit too. She said that I'm in touch with my body and could take a level 1 class if I wanted. Maybe I LOOK like I can handle a level 1 class but believe me, I felt like I was near death during most of the beginners class. So, I've got a nutritionist and that's it. That's not bad at all but between my nutritionist and acupuncturist I'd rather have my acupuncturist.

Alright people, I'll give you what you really came here for! Aislinn is now 7 months old. She and I now go to a Mommy & Me class which she LOVES but the woman who runs the class, "E", keeps pronouncing Aislinn's name "AYZ-LYNN" even after I politely correct her, "ASH-LYNN". Uggghhhhhh! In about 13 years Aislinn will be telling me how much she hates me because I gave her this crazy Irish name. Bleh. I still love it and I hope that she will someday. Anyway, there's a guy that works at the Mommy & Me place and he looks like Freddy Prinze Jr. when he was the Manny on Friends. I want to laugh every time I see him and tell him that I loved the recorder solo he did on the show. Anyway, Aislinn stands up, she says "da da" "ma ma" and "ma ma ba ba" when she wants to eat. She is a great crawler but really prefers to be in a standing position as much as she can be. She absolutely LOVES being outside so my mom is going to buy her a snow suit so that we can still go out in the winter. Bath time is tons of fun. We enjoy splashing and eating rubber duckies. She's adorable!

Now that we have more of a routine I should be able to keep you updated on Aislinn and other "events" in my life.

Desperate

2007-07-17T12:20:00.001-04:00

I need a job. My husband needs a job. I don't want to turn my daughter into a child actor just so that we have enough money to pay the mortgage. Don't worry people, that isn't going to happen. I just want her job to be being a kid. Howie had an interview last week and we're hoping he'll get it because if he does we'll have FREEEEEEEEEEEEE medical again. I had an interview yesterday for the most boring job imaginable. I would be an HR assistant at the hospital. What does that mean? That means I'd be answering phones and dealing with people who come into the office. What is that REALLY called? A R.E.C.E.P.T.I.O.N.I.S.T. people! Yes, there's nothing wrong with being a receptionist but I already did that job - FIVE years ago. While it was a wonderful job because I got to know everyone from the delivery guys to the company president I really don't want to do it again. I feel that I have done all I can do with that position and I really would rather do something else. The lady that interviewed me seemed to think I should be looking for jobs above the administrative assistant level because of my work experience and I couldn't agree with her more. The only problem is that I'm STILL working on my degree. Let me share my story about college and me. Right after high school I had to attend a community college because my "gifted" brother spent all of my parents' money on his college education and also because my asshole guidance counselor told my mother that I was stupid and wouldn't be able to make it at a real college which she accepted because... well... that meant that she wouldn't have to pay for a real college. FUCK YOU MR. FULLER! Yeah, am I allowed to use his real name? Fuck him! He has retired since then so he won't be getting in the way of anyone else's college education. I wanted to major in interior decorating but I couldn't because my ghetto ass college didn't have that major available. So I was told that I should major in fine arts because that's so totally the same exact thing as interior decorating. I hated that more than life itself and thought that maybe they'd have something like advertising available as a major because that was an interest of mine as well. They didn't have that either so my brother (the gifted one with the expensive college education) suggested I do marketing. So I switched to marketing which wasn't bad but I just felt brain dead in the classes at this college. Now, before everyone starts to think I'm a bitch and that I think community college is for stupid people, that's not true. I know that it's inexpensive option for people who can't afford 4 years at an expensive university. No problem. I know that there are MANY smart people who attend community colleges. That being said, I think that the people in my classes were fucking stupid, or maybe it was just that I attended a REALLY good high school that prepared the students for college really well. I don't know, all I know is that my brain was numb because while we were duscussing the Opium Wars the students somehow were able to get the teacher off track by getting her into a whole discussion about Pot and Chow Yun-Fat. Seriously. It happened ALL THE TIME. I had to start taking notes for the stupid non-educational discussions so that I'd keep my mind from wondering, otherwise I'd miss when we started discussing the REAL topic. It saddened me when I realized there were more notes on Pot than there were on the Opium Wars. I eventually dropped out because working in retail pushing body lotion and shower gel was more stimulating for my brain than attending classes. I moved to VA when my brother went overseas for a year. I lived in his apartment for free and became a co-manager at B&BW. I decided to stay in the area because Howie and I were dating and wanted to move in together. I wasn't going to school, just working a billion hours at the store. Then 9/11 happened and I decided forcing people to buy at least $30 in shower gel and lotion wasn't important in life. That's when I got the receptionist job at the company I work(ed) for now. I also decided to go back to school - online. I chose to major in information systems for some reason. I had a 4.0 but it was boring. After Howie and I got married I decided that I wanted enroll in another school to get a B.S. in holistic nutrition and an N.H.D. I'm still working on that now. So, I really don't have any kind of degree in anything because I can't make up my mind and I'm also a tad pissed I never went to a real college. Anyway, I don't regret any of it because if things didn't go that way then I wouldn't be married to Howie and we wouldn't have Aislinn. While this path has lead me to a VERY happy personal life it has not provided me much for my professional life. I can totally do anything I want. My brother and sister both have masters degrees but when my sister ended up unemployed and not able to get a job in the field she had been working in and specifically educated for she freaked out. She was scared about having to do something that she didn't have a degree for. She asked me how she was going to do a job she didn't know how to do. Every job I've ever done I have had no idea how to do going into it. Sure, the receptionist job wasn't difficult because you can probably train a monkey to answer phones. I will say that some phone systems are really fucking complicated and sometimes require a PHD to use. Monkeys can't learn how to opperate one of those... but I did. Being an office assistant mostly requires that you move fast, stay organized, and bullshit a lot of the cranky office staff. Not that bad though. Being a program coordinator, that's a whole new ball game. I didn't know how to get concurrences, I didn't know about the area we worked in, I didn't know how to hire a consultant, I didn't know squat. In the end I was doing it all and I even got to travel to Zimbabwe and pretend I knew what the hell I was doing with a certain health organization. You don't need a fucking degree to do half of this shit, but in order to get people to give you a chance you do. Either that or you have to show them you can do it, which is how I got to be a program coordinator. So now that I've made a short story long, I don't know if I'll get this stupid HR job at the hospital or not. I could use it because money would be good, but I REALLY don't want to be away from Aislinn all day. I've been with her every day since she was born and every time I think about putting her into daycare my heart breaks. I don't think that anyone who chooses to or has to put their kid into daycare is a bad person at all. You have to do what you have to do and I don't think that's wrong at all. If you have to do it so that you have extra income that's fine, I probably will have to. If you are someone who needs to get out of the house and work, interact with adults everyday, that's fine too. It's really not the quantity of time you spend with your child, it's the quality. You have to do what you have to do to make you happy so that you will be a good parent when you are with your child. If working outside the home is what makes you happy then I think you should do that. I thought that I'd go crazy being home with her all the time, I thought I would be the kind of person who wanted to get out of the house and be at the office. I didn't think that I'd have such a hard time with the though of putting her in daycare, but it's killing me. I LOVE that I've been here to see every new thing that she does. I hate that in the future I may not be the first person to see her crawl or walk. I also hate that someone else is going to be the one that knows what to do to make her happy during the day. Right now I'm the one that knows what she wants and how she wants it. I think that getting up in the morning and going to work as the HR assistant at the hospital would be hard enough because it bores me to death, but leaving her with someone else so that I can go to work as the HR assistant is going to be much harder. If I have to leave her I feel like it has to be something that I might actually enjoy. However, I don't think anyone is going to hire me to do a job that I would enjoy.

What to do? I really just want to find some way to work from home, and if not that then I want create a business of my own. I don't know what the hell that would be right now. I need something and I'd prefer to be my own boss and to give myself a job. Who wouldn't? If any of my friends that are reading the blog have any thoughts or ideas, don't leave them in the comments, email me.

I know I've been missing again. I've been working, we've been visiting family, Aislinn is growing. I have had no time for myself at all lately. I attempted to give myself a pedicure but that didn't work out. I think I need a bubble bath and a pedi. Maybe some other at-home-spa treatments. Maybe this weekend? Maybe not? Who knows.

Updates on Aislinn:
1. She puked in my mouth today. It tasted sweet and it was also REALLY gross. Nothing like having your own breast milk regurgitated back into your mouth.

2. She is nearly crawling. She's pushing herself up in front and in back, then she rocks herself front to back and collapses. Very cute!

3. Her new favorite thing is drinking straight out of mommy's water bottle or out of a cup. This is of course with help from mommy or daddy. She doesn't just pick up a cup and drink from it. Let's not be silly!

4. She has two words. Ma ma and Ba ba! Seriously! She knows I'm her Ma ma! She reached for me and said "Maaaa". When she was super hungry one morning she grabbed my shirt (trying to breastfeed) and said "MA MA BA BA". I think that loosely translates to "Mommy, give me some boob milk! NOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!" I'm just guessing though.

5. Her favorite hang out spot is now her exersaucer. It's colorful, it's fun and it plays some awesome carny music. What else could you ask for. Honestly?

6. Her favorite non-toy toys are TiVo, the modem and the wireless router. We'll have to rearrange some things in the TV stand.

7. Her very bestest friend in the whole wide world is our cat, Kirby. When she sees him she drops everything. Eating, playing, diaper changes, nothing matters when Kirby walks into the room. She MUST touch his soft, shiny, smooth, black fur.

8. She has a real giggle now. It's the cutest baby giggle in the world.

I guess that's all I have for you. Thanks for reading all of that boring crap about me at the beginning. I love all y'all!

Father's Day and The First Cold

2007-06-25T23:50:00.000-04:00

Howie's FIRST Father's Day went well. I woke up at 6:45 am to go to the grocery store to buy him balloons and cake. I also looked for hash browns for his breakfast but they didn't have any in the store for some reason. I decided that I'd head over to McDonalds and get ghetto hash browns. Ghetto or not, they're good! After my early morning shopping spree I came home, put things away, and crawled back into bed. When Aislinn woke up I got her dressed in the cute little Ralph Lauren dress someone gave us that we haven't had an excuse for her to wear until now. Howie was awake so he came downstairs to open his gifts.

Aislinn with Howie's stack of Father's Day gifts.

Howie with his new XBox HD DVD player.

A new camera bag that will hold all of the extra lenses he apparently needs for the camera.

Mets tickets for the last game of the season, which is also Howie's birthday. It'll be Aislinn's first baseball game. Woohoo!

A book that I made for Howie on Shutterfly.com.

I then made him scrambled cheese eggs, bacon, and heated up the hash browns. YUM! The rest of the day was pretty laid back. We took a walk in Westport, had some bitchin' pizza, then we came home. Aislinn slept, ate, played. For dinner we ordered Chinese food and for dessert we had chocolate cake.

So what else has been going on while I should have been blogging about Father's Day? We cleaned the house, searched for jobs, I worked, and Aislinn came down with her first cold. I feel so bad because her cute little nose is stuffy and running and she's all congested. I wish I could just make her better. I hate seeing her sick like that. We took her to the doctor in the beginning when the cold wasn't that bad. She told us that if it were worse she'd have us give her something, but it usually just makes babies more fussy or something. So instead she told us to steam up the bathroom and bring her in for a few minutes. I turned the hot water on full blast and closed the door before her bath. I was going to go in there and change the temperature to fill up her actual bath once the room was all steamed up and then I was going to use the baby vapor bath soap to wash her. While I was getting her ready for her bath I asked Howie to go in and fill up her tub. He went in the bathroom and there was so much steam that his glasses fogged up and he said it was so hot he could barely breathe. He left the door open to let out some steam before I went in. He couldn't fill up the bath because he couldn't see so I went in to do it. It was pretty warm in there and it was very wet. My hair started to curl up and I started to sweat. I filled up her tub and left the door open for a few more minutes. I think the steam and the vapor bath helped. We used the snot sucker to get the snot out of her nose but she only allowed that about 10% of the time. A bunch of people told us to put a pillow under her mattress but when we did it looked like bad news to me. I pictured her turning the wrong way in her sleep and rolling down the "hill" in her crib. We decided that it was probably best for her to sleep in her swing since she likes that and she can sit up while sleeping without rolling away. Howie brought the humidifier downstairs and placed it near her swing. That seemed to work well. This cold started on Monday and it seems to be much better now. It isn't over but it's better.

She has been all about me lately. Daddy makes her feel better too. Howie's parents were over on Thursday and she just wanted me to hold her the whole time. It made me feel bad and I figured they were just thinking that she was favoring me because I breast feed her and they think that is keeping her from bonding with Howie or anyone else. Whatever. I was surprised when they said it was probably because she was sick and just wanted her Mommy. I really expected them to attack the breastfeeding like they usually do. It is sweet that she wants to be with me and that I make everything all better for her, but I do feel bad when she cries when other people are holding her. Oh well, someday she'll be 16 and she won't want me around at all so I am going to just love this time I have with her right now.

As far as unemployment goes things are the same. I'm working just enough to keep our health insurance. My former boss told me that if Howie and I move back to VA that I'd have a full-time job. I was tempted to go back because I miss living there and I really miss my friends, Bren, Les & my brother's gf, "J". Of course I miss my boss "D" and the rest of my co-workers. For the past month I think it has seemed like we were on vacation and the whole unemployment thing wasn't real. Howie is growing a beard and I only shave once a week. Howie's becoming an online poker champion and getting really good at cleaning the house. I have been doing busy work for my company just to keep our insurance and have started expanding my TV viewing with shows like Engineering the Impossible, Design Rivals, Flip This House, Flip That House, Hey Paula, and Kathy Griffin: My Life on the d-list. I figured I need to keep things balanced between learning and garbage TV. It's going well. If the housing market was better I could easily flip a house, and I'm amazed that it took 3 times as long to build Chartres Church than it did to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. WTF? Are you serious? I also enjoy watching Paula Abdul act like a stupid spoiled crack head when crying about how her two assistants didn't pack her a pair of sweat pants for her to wear on her flight. Anyway, I think the vacation will soon come to an end and the panic will truly set in. I still have faith that everything will be ok and work out. It has to.

Before I go I just want to send all y'all over to Les over at In Search of a Baby Ug to send all of your good vibes and wishes to her and her little embryos. Good luck Les! I love you!!

I Should Be Fired

2007-06-14T23:56:00.000-04:00

Not from the job that I was already fired from but from blogging on my blog. I SUCK at keeping up with my blogging at the moment and I keep saying that I'll get better yet here I am posting a month after my last entry. Reasons I have been too busy to blog:

1. Completing all the work I had left before what should have been my last day of work.
2. Keeping up with all the new work from many random people who were bullied into giving me busy work by my former boss who was worried about me, Howie and her "AGD" (Almost Granddaughter) after learning that Howie was fired from his job on the first day of my unemployment.
3. Aislinn is getting to be a big girl and wants to explore new places beyond her tiny playmat on the floor. That means that it's not as easy to get things done because when she does her little inch worm move off of the mat onto the rug she cries because the rug hurts when you slide your head across it. More details about this subject below. The main point is that all of this exploring that she does keeps me busy because she is no longer just hanging out in one spot enjoying her toys.

So there you go. That's why I have been missing. I hope to catch up with all of your blogs soon and keep up on mine. Now that Howie is home it should be getting a little bit easier. How great is that, both Howie and I being unemployed? Both of us let go due to the fact that there is absolutely NO MONEY coming in to pay either of us! Great! Right? I'm semi-unemployed. Luckily I have the most awesome former boss on the planet. I'm like the child she never had. For the past 5 years of my life she has really been there for me, professionally and personally. She is a wonderful person and I love her and miss her so much. She didn't want to let me go, but they just didn't have the money in their budget to keep me. They can barely afford to keep her but since she is the HR Manager they really couldn't live without her. She was trying to find some work in the office for me to do but considering she has a whole lot of work and not much help she hasn't had time to hunt things down. As soon as I told her Howie lost his job she ran around the office finding work for me from projects that have some extra money in their budget. It's not full-time work, but it's enough to make a little bit of money and keep my insurance for another month. She hopes to find some more work for me in July, but can't promise it. I'm searching for jobs and I guess I'll file for unemployment in July. Our parents have offered to help if we need it. We'll be ok. I wasn't this relaxed when he told me. In fact, I wanted to puke when he called to tell me he lost his job. After totally freaking out I decided that everything would work out just fine. I could be in denial. Whatever, I'm sticking with that.

Enough about the unemployment. Bleh! Aislinn has started solid foods. YAY!! She LOVES cereal, squash, and so far seems to enjoy carrots. In a couple of weeks she will start fruit. She is good at eating, doesn't really play with her food but if we don't put that spoon in her mouth fast enough she will grab our hand and guide it in. She likes to hold her spoon herself sometimes. When she has a bottle she likes to hold it herself. She was able to roll from belly to back and back to belly since April 25th but didn't really do a whole lot of rolling onto her belly simply because she preferred laying on her back. She got over that and rolls onto her belly all the time now. She also loves to grab her feet and at times tries to get them both in her mouth at the same time. She has also recently decided that she enjoys eating her hand. She has always liked "chatting" quite a bit but has started trying out a few new sounds. I love her cute little squealy voice. She's perfect! She's trying to crawl right now but it's more like an inch worm kind of move, sometimes it's kind of like a yoga downward facing dog pose. The back end wants to go places but the front end isn't sure how to travel yet. She wants to pull herself along with her arms but that doesn't work. So her legs will get going and her little butt goes up in the air and her front end starts to get pushed along. By front end I don't really mean arms, I mean her head kind of runs along the floor and she cries because her face is getting roughed up. After a while she completely collapses on her belly with her face right into the floor and screams at the top of her lungs. We've laid down blankets around her playmat so that if she ventures off she won't have to get rug burn but it really doesn't make it much better. I think she's frustrated because she knows what she wants to do but hasn't really figured it all out yet. She'll get there sooner or later.

The only other new thing to share is that I have started going to acupuncture treatments. I know that sounds nuts since we are unemployed but the acupuncturist is giving me a deal and our parents are helping us out with some things. I'm going to get help for my PCOS and weight loss. I'm not getting help with my PCOS in order to get pregnant right now, just to regulate my hormones and get my cycle back on track because I currently don't have a cycle. What else is new, right? I felt great after the appointment. The needles didn't really hurt at all, especially after the number of needles I stuck myself with during fertility treatments. There was just one spot that hurt like holy hell and that was my right ankle. There was one in my right foot that hurt a tad, but the right ankle almost felt like it was sprained. She tried to be gentle with that spot but I didn't want her to take it out. It's a big spot for hormonal disorders. Clearly, as if I didn't already know, my hormones are all out of whack. It didn't hurt for too long, the pain eased up after a while. She did go deeper with the needles after 15 minutes or so. When she went deeper with the needle on my right ankle it was too much so she backed it out a bit. If any of you out there are afraid to try acupuncture because you don't want it to hurt don't let that keep you away. It really isn't meant to hurt and other than that one needle it didn't. After some time it shouldn't hurt as much and if it does hurt too much you just have to tell your acupuncturist and they can change the placement of the needles or not go as deep. You really should give it a try. It's well worth it. The needles are very thin, like a human hair. I love it. It's nice to have some time to myself, something that makes me a healthier person. I'll keep you updated on the acupuncture treatments.

So... Father's Day weekend! YAY!! Father's Day is also my birthday. My mom always said that if she knew I was going to be born on Father's Day she wouldn't have bought my father a gift. It's will also be the one year anniversary of when we told our families that I was pregnant with Aislinn. I'm choosing to make Father's Day all about Howie and we're going to celebrate my birthday on Saturday. I want his first Father's Day to be all about him. I'm so excited because I bought him so cool gifts, even though we're poor. Howie always gets screwed when it comes to gifts. His birthday is at the end of September. September is a big month because we have two other birthday and my parents anniversary. Once his birthday rolls around at the end of the month we've had to get other people gifts and pay bills so we're tapped out. We've never made a lot of money because of the kind of work that we do so we've always been pretty strapped at the end of each month. So, here we are in June. Both of us unemployed and it's Howie's first Father's Day. I can't just let that go by. He made sure that I had a great mother's day and he always makes sure that I have a great birthday. He never complains and is always saying that he's just happy to be spending his birthday with me even if we can't afford to do anything nice and I know he'd do the same on Father's Day. Not this time though. I know it's not about flashy gifts or anything, and we all know that Aislinn is a big enough gift for us both. I just want to do something nice for him, so I am. I bought him thoughtful gifts too, not just crap to say I got him something and spent money. I got him things that will make him happy and I can't wait for it to be Sunday.

Well, right now it's 2:00 am and I really should get my butt in bed because I have to get up early with Aislinn and get some work done that I should have had done a couple of days ago. I will leave you with a new picture of Aislinn eating squash and looking completely cute.

Happy Mother's Day

2007-05-17T14:40:00.000-04:00

My first Mother's Day was great! Howie got up before I did to feed Aislinn. When I got up he had flowers and balloons waiting for me in the living room. He had my coffee ready for me and then he made me pancakes. After Aislinn took a nap we all went to New Canaan to walk around and shopped a bit. When we got home Howie grilled some steaks and for dessert he had a huge chocolate chip cookie with "Happy Mother's Day" written on it. It was exactly what I wanted.

I also packed up Aislinn's 0-3 month clothes. I was a bit weepy because she's not that tiny little newborn baby that I brought home anymore. My little baby is growing up quickly. I do love seeing her do new things and grow, I just wish I could also rewind just to hold on to my itty bitty baby. Putting the next size clothes in her drawers and closet was a little bit exciting too. There are so many cute things for her to wear I just can't wait to see her in everything! Now I'm talking about her like she's a doll. Oh well.

I am still slacking a bit with my posting. I can't seem to get things together here. I had a routine that recently changed and I need to get back on track. We just finished doing a lot of cleaning last night and finished putting pictures in frames so that we can FINALLY put pictures up on the walls. I've only been trying to do that for 3 1/2 years! Now I should have more time to post since I'm not trying to clean up.

Well, my mother and brother-in-law should be here soon so I should probably wrap this up. My MIL is bringing baked ziti! YUM! Here are some pictures from Mother's Day and one extra of Aislinn with Eeyore.

For some reason Picsa's red eye reduction won't work so it looks like Aislinn has devil eyes. I was also looking at the way I'm sitting and wondering why that didn't hurt my knee.

No, I Haven't Been Kidnapped By Aliens

2007-05-10T09:16:00.000-04:00

I have just been super busy. A lot has been going on. I had my bloggerversary and didn't blog, Aislinn has had her Jewish baby naming (Jewish name is Ayelet Malka), reorganized the house like 100 times to fit in all of her new things, and I was let go from my job. Yup, lost my job because they've lost their funding and can barely pay the HR manager. I know that my boss didn't want to let me go. Now I need to find a new job. I would LOVE to continue working from home but I don't know if that's going to be possible. My last day is the 31st so I have been trying to get things wrapped up while spending every single moment I can with Aislinn because I may not be home with her much longer. It breaks my heart to think about that so I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Updates on Aislinn:

She's drinking about 6 oz. per feeding now and is just a few weeks away from starting rice cereal!

She has rolled from her back to her belly.

She held her bottle on her own once. She actually took the bottle in her hands and took it away from me.

Still breastfeeding but I'm trying to catch up the 6 oz. she wants per feeding.

She laughs and smiles all of the time.

She loves to "talk" to me when I change her diaper or even during breastfeeding. She also talks a lot to herself while she's in her swing or playing on her mat.

Her best friend is her lamby (blanket with lamb head attached to it).

She loves to push herself around from place to place with her feet while still laying on her back.

She loves to lick everything. Sometimes suck on things, but mostly licking. It's very cute.

My sister has gotten me into scrapbooking. All I did was buy some supplies and I think I already need a 12 step program. DON'T get into scrapbooking if you have recently been let go from your job because it's a horrible addiction that sucks all of your money from your bank account. Just say no! I have stuff to scrapbook for events that have yet to happen. Not only am I taking on a scrapbook for myself, but two grandparent scrapbooks. It's too late to save me, just save yourself. Don't start!

Howie and I are going to take a short trip to VA to see our old co-workers and friends. With the exception of my brother's girlfriend and my BFF, Brenda, I haven't seen anyone in VA since August of last year. They barely saw me pregnant and have never seen Aislinn. I can't wait to see my snarky fertility buddy, Les. She said she was going to start writing in her blog again so everyone should keep an eye out. She's about to go through an IVF cycle soon so everyone try to be there to support her. I really do miss DC/VA. I think about it all the time, but I am still happy that we moved to CT. I just wish that CT and DC were closer together so that I could easily see all my friends.

But we are making new friends now that the weather is warmer. All of the condos in my complex are in a circle and there is a grassy courtyard area between all of the condos. We have a big tree with two swings on it by our unit so all the kids and their mothers hang out by us. Yesterday, while Aislinn was taking a nap, Howie put together our new patio furniture and I did some gardening on the side of the condo. Howie and I ripped up some ugly bushes and I planted some flowers my father gave to me. My dad grows flowers for a living. Anyway, everyone was outside and came over to talk to us. When I finished planting the flowers we heard Aislinn crying inside so I went in because Howie still had some stuff to do out there. I went upstairs to change out of my dirty clothes before picking up Aislinn. I put on some striped pj pants and a t-shirt that wouldn't be too offensive to go outside in. I picked Aislinn up and thought that we would just sit outside and watch Howie finish putting the furniture together but when I went out there was a circle of children outside holding the baby boy that is 3 weeks younger than Aislinn. As soon as the kids saw me they were like "ANOTHER BABY!!!" I sat down in the grass with the kids and all the little girls wanted to hold her. I let a couple of them hold her but they are kids and it was awkward. Aislinn kind of got freaked out when all the kids were pawing at her and kissing her so I took her back and told them that they could talk to her while she got used to them. The kids are cute and it was fun to see all the neighbors out in the courtyard or on their porches. Everyone is going to get together and have a party in the courtyard next month. It's nice living here.

Aislinn was conceived one year ago today. I can't believe it has been a year! This weekend will also be my first Mother's Day. I can't really wrap my head around it. It'll be Mother's Day and I'm actually the Mom this year. I don't know what we're going to do. I would be happy just walking around Westport or New Canaan. I just like to spend time with Howie and Aislinn. I promise to post again by Monday to let you know how the weekend went. I won't disappear for a month again.

OUCH!!

2007-03-30T21:46:00.000-04:00

Poor baby! Yes, Aislinn had her first shots today and she definitely hated it. I've heard about babies not really realizing what's going on with the first shot and starting to cry on the second shot, not my baby. They inserted the needle and she let out a loud cry and it apparently stunned her so much that she didn't even want to breathe back in. Her mouth hung completely open void of sound, tears welling up in her eyes and her face was beet red. The nurse tapped her a bit to get her to just breathe in again and just let her crying out. She did and then didn't stop crying for 15 minutes. She looked kind of sad and groggy when we got home.

I changed her diaper and then breastfed her for about 45 minutes before putting her down for a nap. She woke up on her own 4 hours later and I fed her again. She slept again after that, right through her usual fussy time. I slept right through it too. She woke up a little bit after Howie came home. She was feeling a little warm so we took her temperature. Howie had watched them take her temperature at the hospital so he graciously agreed to take her temperature with the rectal thermometer. I had read online that she may poop AFTER we FINISH taking her temperature. That was a lie. While Howie had the thermometer in she started grunting and pushing. There it was - poop! She was pushing so hard that she pushed the thermometer right out. We had to do it a second time and she did have a temperature of 100.1. As I was cleaning her up and about to put on a new diaper some very liquid poo came shooting out of her butt. SHOOTING! That was the end of the poop. We cleaned her up and I gave her some liquid Tylenol. Now she's hanging out in her swing smiling at her Daddy. Things seem to be going well so far. Thank God! We have to give her a bath later because she's getting her picture taking in the morning. No, I wasn't stupid enough to schedule photos for the day after her shots, her shots had been scheduled for April 4th but the doctor's office called yesterday to reschedule the appointment for today. The doctor wasn't going to be in on the 4th.

I had my doctor appointment on Wednesday. They have just moved into their new office and everything is out of whack. I'll cut them some slack because I remember how crazy things were after we moved our office from one building to another and everything was all crazy for a few weeks. I was on time, which is almost shocking these days. The office was full of people who all seemed to be a little on edge because the office was running behind so everyone was waiting for a while. I waited an hour and watched people who had come in before and after me come and go. Finally one of the nurses called me back and explained that someone was supposed to call me that morning to tell me that Dr. Hot-Stuff had an emergency and wouldn't be able to see me so Dr. Talks-to-Much would see me instead at their office in the hospital which is back in the town where I live! The nurse was so sorry. So, instead of having me reschedule my appointment they were faxing my file over to Dr. Talks-to-Much at the hospital. She would look at the ultrasound and then call the new office where I was waiting and talk to me over the phone. Yeah! Seriously! I have to say, I don't care that I was talking to someone over the phone. I wish that Dr. Hot-Stuff would have just called me with the results two weeks ago. Anyway, I waited another 15 minutes before the nurse came back out to tell me that Dr. Talks-to-Much wanted Dr. Hot-Stuff to talk to me herself. So, they were going to have Dr. Hot-Stuff call me at home as soon as she got out of labor and delivery. Later that afternoon she called and told me that there was about half a centimeter of membrane left and there would be concern IF I was still bleeding because that would mean that my uterus wasn't contracting properly or something. I have stopped bleeding so everything is fine. I can't believe I waited two weeks to hear that. I mean, I had convinced myself that I had cancer and even wrote up a will. That's partly my fault for being totally nuts, but it would have been nice to not have to schedule an appointment to get that info. I know that they have been busy with moving and wrapping things up at one place and moving to the next place. I wish they had been more organized. They are a good group of doctors though, they're WAY better than the doctor I had in VA.

So that's my week. The weekend will be very busy with pictures being taken tomorrow and an early Passover dinner with Howie's parents on Sunday. The highlight of my weekend? You won't believe it. Here it is!

Yeah, a bottle of water. What you should know about me is that I am a bottled water snob. I love bottled water, sometimes for the actual taste of the water, sometimes for the bottles. In this case all I can say is that I am attracted to this bottled water for the bottle. I have been watching Courtney Cox drink it on Dirt and every wannabe designer on Top Design drink it. I went on a mad search over the internet for this exact water and ended up finding a picture of Lindsay Lohan drinking it. I magnified the picture as if I were on CSI except she was holding the bottle sideways and I was unable to read the gigantic letters spelling out V-O-S-S! Howie and I both searched google and both came up with VOSS water. Howie then hunted it down in NYC at some coffee shop across from his office and brought it home to me. I have been saving it for the perfect moment all week. This weekend I will drink it all up and maybe I will love the taste as much as I love the bottle. I don't know but I hope that I do!

Two Months!!

2007-03-26T10:09:00.000-04:00

Happy two month birthday to my preshus baybee!

How are we spending this exciting day? Well, I have returned to work and she is peacefully sleeping in her swing. All is good... so far.

Her two month doctor visit is next week. I'm dreading it. My little peanut has to get her shots. My heart is already breaking. I know, I know! She will be just fine. I'm just crazy.

My doctor appointment is on Wednesday. The doctor apparently called me to make sure that I had scheduled my follow up appointment. Whatever. I have no more to say until I go to the appointment. I'll probably feel like a total fool for being so worried because she'll probably tell me it's nothing.

Back to Aislinn. I don't want to jinx it but a couple of times in the past week her fussy time was shorter than usual and I think it was actually non-existent yesterday. I'm sure that fussy time hasn't completely disappeared and I guarantee that it will reappear today since it's my first day back at work, I'm just very grateful that it's on it's way out. She still hates tummy time but has started to enjoy bath time. We even get to see smiles during her bath. I love it!

She LOVES Daddy very much. We put her in her baby papasan while we were eating on Friday and she didn't take her eyes off of her Daddy throughout the entire meal. It was too sweet. She did the same thing while we gave her a bath this weekend. It's just too cute.

She now holds her head up 90% when on her belly and most of the time can hold her head still. She rolls over from belly to back. She likes to sleep sideways in her crib, even though we put her in the right way. She makes all kinds of cute little noises, smiles, and laughs. Her best friends are the two butterflies and one bird that rotate above her on her swing. She's getting to know Eli the Elephant but they're taking things slow.

She hasn't really noticed the cat, Kirby, yet. Kirby has definitely noticed her and has recently decided that she's not too bad. He doesn't mind being her big brother.

I have had more time to eat during the day, which is great. Not just eat but also to prepare food. That means I'm back to eating all my happy healthy foods. Woohoo! Ok, lunch is easy for now because soon after lunch Aislinn may get fussy and there's no time for anything until dinner. So lunch is going to be soup or a quick sandwich. Breakfast is a variation of Dr. Oz's (Oprah's doctor) morning shake. If you make it his way it's kind of bland and all you can taste is protein powder, so I add more juice. Any juice will do. I also use strawberries instead of blueberries. Either will do. Then I have eggs with onions and cheese. Dinner is usually chicken of some sort and LOTS of veggies. I LOVE veggies. If there is time for a snack I'll have baby carrots and hummus. I still miss the hummus from Spice of Life Cafe in VA. Their hummus is so smooth and tasty. I have also been chugging water and taking walks whenever the weather and Aislinn will permit. Soon I will be joining a gym and starting Mommy and Me Yoga. I can't wait to start exercising again.

Ok, well, I need to get back to work and pretty soon I'll have to feed Aislinn. I'm feeling pretty confident today that I'll be able to do both at the same time. We'll see how I feel at the end of the day. Hopefully it'll all go well.

Seven Weeks

2007-03-20T11:32:00.000-04:00

Aislinn has been sleeping in her crib for almost a week now. She looks so tiny in her big crib. She's doing well sleeping in her own room. This morning she was crying a bit. When I went in to get her and unwrapped her from the blanket she was swaddled in she seemed to calm down. I think she was a little to warm. I changed her diaper and put her back in her crib to wash my hands. When I came back in she was kind of looking around smiling. I turned her little lamb mobile on. She watched it and kind of "talked" to herself and the lambs for another half hour. She's getting to be a little better at entertaining herself which is nice. Believe me, I love to hold her and play with her but sometimes I have things I have to do, like work. I start working again on Monday. We can't afford daycare so I have to work and take care of her. I'm kind of worried about it because I feel like I won't be able to give the time that I should be giving to both Aislinn and my job. I kind of think that daycare would be good for her, socializing with other kids and stuff. On the other hand I might miss when she does something new for the first time. The thought of missing that breaks my heart. That's selfish though. It doesn't matter, like I said, we can't afford daycare. We will be able to afford Mommy & Me Yoga and hopefully My Little Gym or something. Plus, she has a whole lot of cousins just 1 hour and 45 minutes away. One first cousin and a ton of second cousins. Once she is a little less delicate she'll be able to play with all of them.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, Aislinn's mikvah (Jewish ritual bath) was scheduled for Monday but the Cantor got her days mixed up. We had to go back on Tuesday to get it done. Before going in we asked the Cantor if I had to completely submerge Aislinn and she said that I should. I didn't really want to do it but I figured that if I just dunked her really fast maybe it wouldn't be too bad. The water was so nice and warm. I think I could have floated around in there all day. One thing that I thought was really weird was that it was really hard to keep my feet on the bottom of the pool, even when I was walking in on the stairs. I didn't taste it, but maybe it was salt water. REALLY salty water. Like the Red Sea. Because Aislinn and I were so buoyant in the water it was really hard to dunk her. I almost had to pull her under and I couldn't do it quickly so she opened her mouth as the water started to run over her face and swallowed it. I quickly pulled her up and she started coughing. I felt awful! I almost cried. I looked up at Howie and the Cantor and I think it was understood that I wasn't going to put her under the water so a half a dunk would just have to do. The cantor said two more prayers and I half dunked her two more times and that was it. Now she's Jewish!

One new cool thing Aislinn has been doing for the past couple of days is smiling when she sees Howie or me. The other day she woke up in her swing crying. When I went to get her out she stopped crying and this huge smile came over her face. It was adorable. She did it for Howie too. She's doing it all the time now and I love it. It's awesome to see her respond to us that way. Now we know that she recognizes us and that she's happy to see us. She knows that we're the people that love her and take care of her. I just makes me melt when she smiles at me. Ok! Everything she does makes me melt. I can't believe that you can love someone this much. I think my heart might just explode and that I couldn't love her more but everyday I do love her more than the last. Even when I feel like she's trying my patience I get caught up in her sweetness. I also think that she might think I'm goofy, I don't know, but she seems to be humored when I sing (badly!) to her while changing her diapers. This is something I only do when I'm alone with her because I don't have a good singing voice. I used to sing to my cat when we were alone. I'd make up new words adding "cat" and "Kirby"in here and there so that it was personalized just for him. I think he likes it too. Now I do that for her. I'm such a dork.

So, the real reason I'm blogging now is to distract myself. I feel like I used to when waiting for my fertility nurse to call with my test results. Right now I'm waiting for my doctor to call. My follow up appointment is on March 28th, no different than it was the last time I blogged about this. I had decided to stop thinking and obsessing over the thing in my uterus because if it was urgent then the doctor would have talked to me herself or I assume would have told the nurse that she wanted to see me ASAP. Perhaps something was not communicated properly between Dr. Hot Stuff, the nurse and me. I'm not sure, but yesterday I missed a call from Dr. Hot Stuff. I was so pissed that I missed the call. She called herself, not the nurse, and said that she was calling to discuss my ultrasound and to give her a call back. I called her back as soon as I got the message but I'm forced to leave a message for the stupid nurse who then passes my message along to Dr. Hot Stuff. UUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! I know that the stupid nurse doesn't check the messages until 4:00 pm and then who knows if the doctor will call you back. I didn't get a call yesterday so I'm hoping to get one today. I'm not going to call again because what is the point? If I don't get a call back today then I'll just wait to see her on the 28th. The problem is that I'm obsessing about the ultrasound again because now she's is calling me herself a week later. Maybe she did want to see me sooner and the nurse didn't convey that message. I will update you when and if I get a call. I'm sure it's nothing, but I'm driving myself crazy. It's all my fault for consulting Dr. Google. I barely got any sleep last night thinking about endometrial cancer. I'm nuts. I'm just driving myself crazy. I'm sure it's nothing, maybe just a polyp? I guess it's something because something is there, but it's probably nothing fatal. Ok, I'm going to just end the post now because I'm just having a meltdown right here on my site. I'll keep you updated! In the meantime, look at this goofy smile!

Alter Egos

2007-03-17T01:38:00.000-04:00

Howie and I both have alter egos. There's "Weekend Howie" and "Caffeinated Amy". Our alter egos are much more pleasant to be around. Weekend Howie is very relaxed and has a really good sense of humor. Caffeinated Amy appears when Weekend Howie drags her out of Regular Amy with either a venti caramel macchiato or a large Dunkin Donuts coffee. Caffeinated Amy instantly starts to create new iTunes playlists and updates her iPod. Music only makes Caffeinated Amy that much more desirable to be around. Caffeinated Amy is much like the second alter ego "Inebriated Amy". The one difference between those two is that Caffeinated Amy is a lot less sloppy than Inebriated Amy. Both Weekend Howie and Caffeinated Amy often get together and start power cleaning. Caffeinated Amy dances around singing to the music on her iPod while doing laundry, vacuuming, and general reorganization of the house. Weekend Howie often gets very flirtatious during the cleaning because he's very turned on by how motivated Caffeinated Amy is. These two usually emerge on a Friday night. The night usually ends with a nice shower and then they head to bed. Weekend Howie usually refuels Caffeinated Amy with a coffee on Saturday morning and sometimes even lights all the candles in the house so that Caffeinated Amy awakes to pleasant scents and a hot beverage while he makes breakfast which is sometimes served in bed. Occationally Caffeinated Amy will cook breakfast, but it is usually Weekend Howie because he's totally a morning person. The rest of the weekend is spent enjoying the clean house, watching movies and on sunny days a shopping trip in Westport or New Canaan.

Oh how I LOVE the weekends! Happy Weekend everyone!

Thanks to everyone who actually bothered reading my first paragraph, I'm high on caffeine. Also thanks to those of you who commented on my last blog. It makes me feel better to hear from you, a lot better.

We are about to head to bed because even though the caffeine is a major mood enhancer for me it doesn't keep me awake. I could close my eyes and be out for the rest of the night without any problem. Tonight will be Aislinn's first night sleeping in her own room. I'm sure she'll do better than I will. I had to give up the family bassinet to my cousin who just had a baby girl.

Dr. Google and My Uterus

2007-03-15T12:05:00.000-04:00

I went in for my ultrasound on Monday to find out why I was still bleeding. First, I must say, the dildo cam hurts like hell right now. Just when I get the green light from the doctor and think that I might want to get it on with my husband again I get wanded and now I think I might need to wait a bit longer. It's still a bit tender where I had been stitched up. Anyway, moving on! The ultrasound tech did find something there. She appeared to be concerned, but didn't flip out. She decided that she had to look at it in 3D too. Then she decided to look at my ovaries which are COVERED in cysts right now. Woohooo! YAY PCOS!! So, she said that she would have the doctor look at the ultrasound and get back to me. I waited the rest of Monday to hear something, then part of Tuesday before Howie couldn't wait anymore and actually called the doctor's office himself. At the end of the day I got a call from one of the nurses saying that Dr. Hot Stuff had a half day and was working at the hospital so she wasn't able to take a look at the ultrasounds yet but they were going to have the ultrasounds faxed to the hospital office so that she could look at them on Wednesday. I waited half of the day on Wednesday before calling and left another message asking if they could please have Dr. Hot Stuff look at the ultrasounds and call me ASAP. Reason being that my curiosity got the better of me and I turned to Dr. Google. Dr. Google told me that worst case scenario I could have endometrial cancer. Maybe it's just a polyp or maybe it's cancer, who knows. It's not a piece of my placenta because that was completely intact. So, later that day I got a call back from the nurse. Dr. Hot Stuff had looked at the ultrasounds and said that it may or may not be something (NO SHIT!) but she'd really like to see me again for a follow up with her in the office. They transferred me to the receptionist who was unable to give me anything sooner than a March 28th appointment because they are moving to a new office. Whatever. I am sure that if it were possibly cancer, if she thought it was then she would have told the nurse to tell me I had to come in right away and they would have already checked the schedule for this week to see where they could squeeze me in. I'm not going to think about it right now because I'll make myself crazy. I already did while waiting to hear back from the doctor. I spent a lot of time crying just thinking about how I just had Aislinn and how sad it would be if I did end up having cancer and I was so sick I could barely do anything with her, or that I would miss out on things I would have done with her in the first year. Worse, what if I died and missed out on her whole life. She'd never remember me. I need to pull it together, it's so not cancer! I'm just nuts, and I should NOT consult Dr. Google.

Moving on to other things. Aislinn rolled over yesterday!!! I decided that since she hates tummy time right now that just putting her down for a few moments here and there is better than designating specific time to that. So after I change her diaper and need to wash my hands I put her down on her play mat on the floor. While I'm in the bathroom I can see her so it's not like I totally left her completely unattended. While I was washing my hands she rolled over! She does it all the time now, within moments of being placed on her belly. I guess that's what I get for forcing the tummy time on her, she found a way to get off her belly on her own. LOL! Anyway, here's a video of it.

Make an on-line slide show at onetruemedia.com

My Postpartum Appointment and Other Stuff

2007-03-09T12:33:00.000-05:00

I went in for my postpartum OB/GYN appointment today. Before Dr. Hot Stuff came in the nurse asked me if I had my first period yet and I told her that I didn't know because I had never stopped bleeding since the delivery. I didn't think anything of it because I figured it was normal. When the doctor came in she asked me if the bleeding had stopped as she was opening my file and I said no. She thought that was a bit odd and told me that if it doesn't stop in two more weeks then she'll want me to come in for an ultrasound. Once we started the exam and she saw how heavily I was bleeding she told me that she wanted me to come in for an ultrasound on Monday. So there you go, I'm going in for an ultrasound on Monday. I have barely gone a week without an ultrasound in the past two years, so that's just fine. I just hope that everything is ok. I didn't even ask what could be wrong because I don't want to know until they know what's up. I'm sick of obsessing and worrying about my female functions when I clearly have no control over them. I have a whole weekend before the ultrasound and if I think about it too much or spend all kinds of time on Google I'll just drive myself nuts. Instead I'm going to enjoy the weekend, especially going out for a few drinks with our neighbors tomorrow night. It has been forever since I went out for drinks and I REALLY miss my favorite drinking/infertility buddy, Lesley, in VA. LESLEY!!! I MISS YOU SOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!! A cosmo just isn't a cosmo without her. Oh, and one last note on my appointment with Dr. Hot Stuff. She asked me "And what about birth control?" I replied, "Well, my husband and I discussed it and we weren't really sure it's necessary since I don't actually ovulate." Seriously, why should I waste my money??? She then asked, "So if you happen to get pregnant that's ok?" I kind of laughed, "If I get pregnant that would be a miracle." I highly doubt being pregnant and giving birth has magically jump started my reproductive cycle.

Enough about my uterus and it's dysfunctions. Howie and I have been working on planning a Jewish baby naming for Aislinn. Many of you may be confused about why a couple with a baby with a very Irish name and an Irish mommy are planning a Jewish baby naming. Howie's Jewish and I'm working on my conversion. I was working on it while we were still living in VA but our temple decided to create a big class for a large group of people and I was ahead of them, so I had to wait for the others to catch up. Now we're living in CT and I have to get back on track here. Since I hadn't converted before Aislinn's birth she isn't considered to be Jewish, so she needs to have a mikvah before her baby naming so that she will officially be Jewish. I didn't think I would be able to participate since I am not Jewish yet, but the Cantor who is a woman and performing the ceremony can allow me to dunk Aislinn in the bath under her supervision. So, now I need to get a bathing suit.

Yes, a bathing suit. I don't have one that fits because in the past I wasn't a huge fan of my chubbiness but after being naked and pregnant dripping amniotic fluid and blood in front of everyone I no longer care. I'm over it. Just being pregnant made me feel better about my body. I don't know if I'm going to be laying out in the sun by the pool with the whole housing community this summer, but I don't obsess over my general appearance the way that I used to. I feel good about the way that I look and if I could find the clothes I owned BEFORE I was pregnant I might actually enjoy dressing myself. That's something I haven't enjoyed in years! Oddly enough being comfortable with my weight and my body is actually more incentive for me to eat more healthfully and lose weight. In April I plan to start Mommy & Me Yoga classes and also return to the gym. I can't wait to go back to the gym!!! I'm also looking forward to cooking real meals again someday soon. Now that Aislinn feeding schedule allows for more time in between feedings I have actually been eating breakfast and lunch most of the week and I'm still able to fit in a nap and some light cleaning. In two more weeks I need to find some time in my day for work and school. It will be more difficult than I had originally thought to work from home and take care of Aislinn but I'm sure I'll work it out.

One Month

2007-03-05T22:05:00.000-05:00

Aislinn had her one month physical on Monday. She now weighs 8 lbs. 3 oz. and measures 21 1/4 inches in length. She's getting so big so fast! She's holds her head up like a two month old and she is getting closer to rolling over. She's doing very well. Our next appointment is in four weeks. I'm not really looking forward to that one because that's when she'll be getting her first set of shots since she was born.

Aislinn has been a little more difficult during the day. Today she barely slept at all. Maybe 15 minutes here or there, but ONLY if I was holding her. Around 3:00 pm I had decided that since she was fed, burped, and her diaper was changed that she was simply crying because she was either bored or tired. I tried putting her in the swing and putting her on her playmat. Neither one entertained her. I sat with her and talked to her but that didn't help. I figured since she really hadn't taken a nap that she must be tired, so tired that she's just completely out of her mind. I tried to put her down for a nap but she cried. So, at 3:00 pm I put her crib in her room rather than the bassinet next to my bed. I turned on the monitor so that I could hear her, but I decided I'd let her cry it out for a while. I just simply couldn't do anything else for her and I needed a break from the screaming and crying. I put her in her room because seeing her little face when she cries just breaks my heart. She did alright, she cried a bit but was quiet for the majority of the hour. At 4:00 pm I went in to change her diaper and feed her. She started to cry again during her feeding, it wasn't my let-down reflex because I had pumped before feeding her and I'm trying to just use one side at a time. Burping her seemed to piss her off even more, no matter what position I put her in. She wasn't happy no matter what I did and this continued until 8:00 pm. Now she's fast asleep in her swing. She has been sleeping 5 to 6 hours at night, so I guess I should just be happy. Howie and I might get some time off this weekend. We're considering going to a surprise birthday party for our neighbor and leave Aislinn with Howie's parents. We're not 100% sure that we're going to go, but if we do I can guarantee that I will be relaxing with a few glasses of wine! Anyway, I am going to go to bed in just a few moments so that I will be prepared for tomorrow. If there is anything that I don't mind about the fussiness it's the cute little pouty face that Aislinn makes when she cries.

Milk Milk Everywhere!!

2007-02-23T00:21:00.000-05:00

I know! I know! You are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sick of hearing about the state of my breasts, my milk production, and my daughter's interest in all of that. I promise you that one day you will visit my site and not have to read a post about breastfeeding, but today is not that day.

What is it about my breasts that is so important that I have to post at 12:30 am? I am finally producing enough milk!!!! Woooohoooooooooo!!!!! Unfortunately I have a very forceful let-down reflex which really pisses Aislinn off and usually causes her to have a complete meltdown. I didn't understand what was happening at first. She's always so quiet and when she does cry it's usually this really quiet calm cry, so when she started having these fits I didn't know what was wrong with her. My first thought was that she needed to be burped. When I tried burping her she hungrily sucked her hand in between wails. When I couldn't get her to burp and noticed that she was eating her hand I tried to get her to latch on again which just made her cry more. By the time I gave up on trying to get her to breastfeed she was so distraught that she wouldn't even take a bottle. The only way I could calm her down was to walk her around the house rocking her and patting her back. After a while she'd finally stop crying and then just fall asleep. This has been going on for three days now. On day two I thought that maybe she wasn't getting enough milk. When Howie got home from work I handed her over so that he could feed her a bottle while I pumped. I was surprised to find out that I had more milk than I've ever had, more than enough to satisfy her hunger. When it happened again today I was completely confused so I googled "crying while breastfeeding" and I found that the problem could be a forceful let-down reflex. I looked it up in my breastfeeding book and I feel like a total jackass for not fully paying attention or noticing the cause of her frustration. The book described exactly how she's been acting. I feel like a total idiot for not picking up on the fact that she was gulping, which was followed up by a panicky look, flailing about and then uncontrollable crying. Describing it now I can't understand how it wasn't completely obvious, but I'm so used to not having enough milk that I guess I just never even considered that maybe I had plenty of milk and that it was coming out too fast.

I feel so much better having discovered this. Now I can either pump a bit first, breastfeed more often, or just use a different position so that I'm leaning back and gravity takes care of the rest. Leaning back seemed to help at her last feeding.

Well, I better go. Aislinn needs to be rocked to sleep.

More Boob News and Other Stuff

2007-02-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

Let's get the Boob Report out of the way first. There's good news and bad news. We'll start with the bad news and move on to the good news. My left breast has some strange mystery pain. It's very sensitive and sore, but I can't find any clogged ducts. I will be returning to therapy on Monday to figure out what is wrong. Ugh, more titty torture! I hate it! I also don't have enough milk to satisfy my daughter, but the good news is that my milk supply is increasing!! I'm taking a number of herbal supplements that my lactation consultant recommended. Fenugreek, Goat's Rue, Blessed Thistle and Mother's Milk Tea. Fenugreek has a maple scent to it so if you hang out with me you may end up having the urge to drive over to IHOP and get a large stack of pancakes. So far the mix of herbs is working quite well. YAY!! That's not the only good news. We're off the nipple shield!!! Well, we've had two feedings without it. So far so good! It feels great to be free from the nipple shield. It's just one less thing to deal with.

Aislinn had her two week check up the other day. She now weighs 6 lbs. 15 oz. and is 19 3/4 inches long. She's right on target, but the fact that she's growing up breaks my heart. I know it's just a tiny bit of growing but it breaks my heart that she will soon no longer be my itty bitty baby with itty bitty features. She will never be this tiny ever again so I'm trying to enjoy every moment. The doctor also told me that Aislinn was holding her head up like a one month old. She's so strong, I'm so proud of her!

While my little peanut is gaining weight I'm still losing. I don't remember the last time I was so thin. I'm 17.5 lbs. below my prepregnancy weight!!! I've lost 28.5 lbs. since the baby was born. I actually wore a pair of old jeans that were tucked away in the back of the closet today. It's great, I hope that I keep losing. It's probably a combination of breast feeding and forgetting to eat most of the day. When I do eat during the day it's usually something light like soup and I am really good about drinking lots of water and juices. It's like being on a liquid diet until dinner time when Howie and I either eat something that our parents have made for us or something I made and put in the freezer before going into labor. The only thing I don't dig is the weird flabby belly, but please, I was so huge and I can't expect ALL of that skin to shrink down that quickly. It may not ever shrink down completely, but it's ok. She's totally worth it.

I managed to pull off a surprise Valentine's Dinner for Howie. I made garlic breaded chicken breasts, potatoes, and I wanted to make some sort of veggie but we didn't have any at all so that was it. Pretty limited dinner. I was disappointed with that, but we also had the tiny bottle of champagne that we got with our brunch at the hospital. We didn't drink it there because I hadn't breastfed Aislinn yet so we decided to take it home with us. Dessert was the best part. I had made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting. Nothing big but I have been dying for chocolate cupcakes for months. Aislinn sat quietly in her baby papasan while Howie and I ate, then we opened Valentine's Day cards. I had been looking forward to watching Lost later that night but because I was busy during all of my spare time preparing cupcakes or preparing dinner, cleaning the kitchen table and doing dishes I hadn't had a nap. Once we sat down on the couch to watch Lost I passed out and was pretty much useless for the rest of the night. Howie went to Walgreens after Lost to return something and lost his keys to the house. When he got home he forgot to turn off the headlights on the car. The next morning the battery was dead so our neighbor had to give us a jump and then Howie drove it to the neighbor's garage to get recharged while he was at work. Because Howie and I only have one car and nobody else that we know has a carseat base for our carseat I was unable to bring Aislinn to the doctor that day, so I had to reschedule for Friday. At some point on Friday we got a hole in our back left tire so Howie spent the morning laying on the frozen ground putting our spare tire on. When our neighbor returns home on Tuesday we will bring the car in to have the tires replaced. We have a full spare so we'd rather wait for our neighbor to come home so that we can get a discount on the tires. We're all about saving every cent now that there's a third person in the house. Our luck hasn't been so great the second half of this week, but we've been handling it pretty well. I think we're just too tired to find the energy to get all worked up about it.

I think it's now the time to drink a Pepsi or a cup of coffee so that I can finally get through the piles of laundry in Aislinn's room. Howie just went through through all the junk on the dining room table so that we can eat on it tomorrow when my parents and sister come to visit tomorrow. The only room in our house that ever seems to be clean is the kitchen. That's just because we're afraid of those nasty little fruit flies and cockroaches returning. The rest of the house can wait. It's amazing how quickly the house can get messy. I don't even know how it happens. I hope to see my house completely clean again someday but for now I don't have the energy to worry about it.

Sorry I didn't get a chance to add pictures the other day, but for those of you asking for new pics here you go!

Mr. Mom & Another Booby Report

2007-02-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

Howie took the entire night shift on Saturday night so that I could sleep. It was great! I got up kind of early on Sunday morning, but I still had more sleep than I've had in the past two weeks. Howie is better on only a few hours of sleep. Later in the day on Sunday I fell asleep on the couch, which I feel silly about because I had an uninterrupted night of sleep. I awoke to Howie feeding Aislinn and the smell of chocolate chip cookies in the oven. Yes! He was actually baking cookies! As if he hadn't already done enough he then went ahead and did some laundry. He's Mr. Mom! I can't believe it, I'm totally useless all day. The only thing I can manage to do is the dishes. He's too cute, I wish I recharged as quickly and easily as he does.

Moving on to my Booby Report.

Sorry people, after you have a baby it's all about boobs, nipples, and counting dirty diapers. Well, after a few months it'll get more interesting.

I received my larger breast shields for my breast pump yesterday. They're so much better!!! While I was pumping last night I felt this awful pain in my nipple for a little while. After I finished pumping I felt for the bump where my clog was and it was nearly gone! Wooohoooo!!!! How great is that?

As for the actual breastfeeding, that's going fine. Aislinn latches on just fine and feeds fine as long as I'm using my nipple shield because she doesn't approve of my tiny nipples. The lactation consultant at the Pediatrician's office seems to think that we'll be able to get her off of that someday, but I don't know how that will happen unless I suddenly grow those huge National Geographic nipples. Oh, I can only dream. I keep trying to get her to nurse without the nipple shield but that just results in Aislinn having a complete meltdown. How dare I offer her those pathetic excuses for nipples? Why would she EVER want to eat from that? Haven't I heard? Bigger IS better! Fine, have the nipple shield! Just eat!

Well, that's all there is to report for now, I think. I could be forgetting something but I'll just update you later. I'd love to add some pics but blogger isn't working for me at the moment. I will add pictures later tonight!

Breast Torture

2007-02-10T22:38:00.000-05:00

I am now going to therapy for a clogged milk duct. The breast shield on my breast pump is apparently too small and has caused the clog around my nipple. For this I have gone to therapy for two days in a row so far. Therapy consists of 10 to 15 minutes with a heating pad, 20 minutes or so with this heated ultrasound wand thingy, and then some amount of time that seems to go on forever of "breast massage". I put that in quotes because that's what they call it but I call it breast torture. Honestly, I could handle massage on all the rest of my breast no matter how tender and sore, but this "massage" around my nipple is awful. I honestly wish I had that weird nipple torture fetish because then it wouldn't be so awful. Howie and I ordered extra large breast shields for my breast pump so that this doesn't happen again. The clog is still there but doesn't hurt as much right now. Thank God! Another really awful gross thing happened to my nipple the other day. I noticed that there were these weird bubbles around my areola just beneath a thin layer of skin. I touched them and they popped and milk came out. Umm, seriously, I wanted to vomit. I really don't know why breastfeeding has to be so difficult for some people. My Mom said she never had a problem, I wish I was as lucky. I'm sticking with it though. Why quit now, if I have to go in for breast torture twice a week no matter what then I might as well keep going and make it worth it.

Ok, enough about breasts and nipples! Howie's parents and brother came over today. We thought they were going to come over tonight but they came this afternoon instead and sent us away to get out on our own for lunch. I seriously wasn't ready to leave my little princess behind. I know that they aren't going to kill her, but I just don't feel like I need to get out and away from her right now. I also wish that if I was going to be kicked out of my house for a little date with my hubby that it was for dinner. Lunch is my least favorite meal of the day, it's boring. Sandwiches, burgers, soups, salads. Bleh! Yay, sometimes they're good but I'm never like "Damn! I wish I could really get out for a good bowl of soup or a kick ass turkey sandwich!" I'd really rather go out for dinner, have some wine and dessert. That would be nice. That's what Howie and I need to get out for, but they sent us out of the house and we had to be back in about an hour. So, we drove around trying to find something we'd like and couldn't settle on anything. We ended up getting some really crappy sandwiches and a couple of sodas at a place where there wasn't any seating so we ended up bring lunch home with us and eating it in our living room, so the first outing without the baby kinda sucked. Oh well. Maybe we'll be able to go out and have some wine eventually! That would be awesome because I REALLY miss drinking! Then again, having a glass of wine right now would probably knock me out immediately. I'd rather have a babysitter so that Howie and I can sleep rather than so that he and I can get out. We're so tired right now that I couldn't fully enjoy a movie or dinner.

So, how is the little princess you may be wondering? She's great! Super cute. We spend lots of time during the day doing tummy time or having skin to skin contact. She likes to lift up her head and look at me a lot. She makes a cute little squeaky noise like a mouse and during feedings she'll sometimes take a break and make a lip smacking noise. Her umbilical cord fell off a few days ago and she has just recovered from her first diaper rash. She's completely perfect!

The First Week

2007-02-06T17:22:00.000-05:00

My little princess is asleep and I'm crazy enough to be blogging rather than sleeping. I'm not even sure how I am keeping my eyes open right now. I'll try to make this a quick entry and hopefully it'll all make sense. If not, well, it's because I'm exhausted. Sorry.

So far things are going well. Breastfeeding is off to a rough start but I'm trying to keep it up. At the hospital she didn't want to breast or bottle feed. Aislinn and I were stressed out with eachother during our first few feedings because I was dredding having people pop in every few hours to grab and pinch my breasts and then have them try to force my poor baby on my breast when she just wasn't freaking hungry yet. After that I would just wish that she'd just latch on so that we'd both get a break from all of that and she was probably like I hate those stupid boobs! She would cry whenever I put her anywhere near me for feeding and was just too worked up to actually try to eat once my milk was coming in. Howie did a lot of bottle feedings while I pumped. I called a lactation consultant who told me to take a bunch of herbal supplements that will help bring in more milk and told me that I had some clogged ducts that I'd have to massage out if I didn't want to go to therapy. No problem, I got that cleared up. Anything to avoid any future torture. Aislinn and I also had to spend more skin to skin time, which sounds great but I feel like there's ALWAYS someone around. I'm working on it though. She has started to breast feed a bit here and there though. It takes forever and I have to wear a nipple shield because my nipples aren't big enough for her (sorry if that's TMI for some of you). The lactation consultant is also having me mix together two different nipple creams to repair some minor breastfeeding damage. Other than that, breast feeding kicks ass! No really, I do want to do this and I'm trying to get through everything. Sure, I would love to just give up because that would actually mean that I could get some more sleep at night, but I know that this is more healthy for the two of us. I hate the thought of her eating formula, which we have had to give her every once in a while, but I really don't want to do that too often.

Aislinn has also already experienced a minor case of diaper rash and some sort of rash on her face. The diaper rash is almost gone and the rash on her face is always moments away from making a full comeback. She's just sensitive, but I think it'll all be ok. The doctor isn't too concerned.

In general though, she's great. I don't want to jinx it, because it's still early and things can change, but she's really good and very quiet. She sleeps well and WE actually have to wake HER up for feedings. When she isn't sleeping she's awake and quiet. Just kinda hangs out and observes her surroundings. She seems pretty laid back, but I don't know. It could still change, we're only one week two. Howie is a really great father. He is so good with her and I think she's already a daddy's girl. I think he's a better dad than I am a mom. Not that I'm horrible or anything, but he's just so good with her and I don't think I'm quite as good. Anyway, he's very cute with her and he has been so good with me too. He has been so supportive about the breast feeding and he is always telling me what a great job I am doing. He's great. If I didn't have him I wouldn't be doing so well right now.

Yesterday was my first day alone with her and I had to bring her to the doctor too. I wasn't worried about the doctor visit, just the fact that I'd have to drive my itty bitty baby around in the car. It was totally fine though, the doctor is just down the street. I was scared to death of being all alone with her. I wasn't sure that I could do it and I feel like Aislinn and I didn't really have a chance to bond right away because my in-laws were instantly there right after her birth. I wanted to have some quiet time alone with her and Howie but his parents couldn't wait to see her so my time was cut short. They also hovered around her when my parents showed up and kept Aislinn all to themselves so that my parents couldn't even get a look at her, but that's a whole other post. I barely got to hold her at the hospital with all the visitors and then we had that awful breastfeeding time together. After that I kind of felt like she was stressed out everytime she was close to me. I would watch Howie with her and just wish that she was as relaxed with me. So, I was pretty worried about being alone with her because I wasn't sure I'd be able to take care of her alone. What if she hated being with me? Anyway, I fed her before going to the doctor, which took longer than I had expected. It took her forever to burp. Right before we were about to leave she pooped so I had to change her diaper. I was already 5 minutes late for her appointment by the time we left. Luckily the doctor is no more than 5 minutes away and I'm sure that many new parents are late to their appointments. The appointment went well and we went home. It was time to feed her again and she was rather hungry. I turned on my iPod so that we could listen to music and I could sing to her while I heated up her bottle and ate some banana bread. After I fed her I put my baby wrap on so that I could carry her around and have my hands free to do some dishes. A while later my brother and his girlfriend stopped in to say goodbye to us. The next time Aislinn sees him she'll be walking and talking, so weird! The rest of the day was pretty much the same thing over and over, feeding, diaper changing, sleeping. By the time Howie got home I felt a lot better about everything. Aislinn and I are just fine. Today was pretty good too. I like doing tummy time together. I like seeing her hold her head up to look at me with her beautiful eyes. I love giving her little kisses and I love when she cuddles up with me and falls asleep. We're more comfortable together now, and this morning she breastfed on both sides without totally freaking out in the middle of it and demanding a bottle. Thank God! So I think things are going to be just fine.

Introducing Aislinn Madison!!!

2007-01-30T23:05:00.000-05:00

Howie was going to update my blog but he has been very busy taking care of both of his girls. So here I am and here's the update.

As you know, my water broke around 7:20 pm or so on Sunday night. We called the doctor and the doula, both said that I should sleep and wait for the contractions to start. The waters were clear so I didn't have to go in right away, but the doctor said that if the water wasn't clear anymore or if I saw a LOT of blood then to go in to the hospital. I decided I'd take a shower before I tried sleeping because when my water broke it reeeeeeeally broke!!! I was covered in fluid and I have been told before that it may be a while before I can shower again so it's best to shower before leaving home. I took a shower and noticed that there was some blood. I didn't know if it was a lot or if it was normal but I knew I'd be more relaxed if we just went to the hospital. So we called the doula, grabbed all of our stuff and left for the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital at around 9:00 pm and I felt my first contraction somewhere around 10:00 pm. We walked around with the doula until around 11:00 pm and then the nurse hooked me up to the machine to monitor the baby and my contractions for a half hour. This is when Howie's parents and brother showed up to say hello before heading over to our house for the night. After the nurse took me off the monitor the doula, Howie and I all decided to rest as much as we could before my contractions got stronger and closer together. I slept on and off. I was having some really nasty acid reflux which was bothering me more than the contractions and kept me from getting more rest. Around midnight we all got up and started to walk the halls again. My contractions were about 10 minutes apart and were hurting a little bit more. After walking for a while I thought it would be nice to try using the birthing ball. While I rolled around on the ball the doula gave me a back massage. The contractions were getting much more intense but between them I was still in a pretty good mood.

When my contractions were about 7 to 5 minutes apart the nurse came back in to hook me up to the monitor. She also checked my cervix and told me that I was about 60% effaced and 1 cm dilated. I was pretty irritated that I was still just 1 cm dilated. Aislinn and I were both doing fine so after 30 minutes she took me off of it again. The contractions were getting pretty bad at that point so I decided to sit on a chair in the shower. I couldn't use the bath because my water had already broken. I was shaking uncontrollably so they covered me with blankets and we made the water as warm as we could. The shower helped with the contractions for about 15 minutes, after that the contractions were so bad that I decided I no longer wished to have a natural birth. I was in so much pain and I had hardly progressed. I thought about how unhappy I was while the contractions were 5 minutes apart, I couldn't imagine how I was going to deal with them when I didn't get a 5 minute break in between them. I was also exhausted and just wanted to sleep so that I'd have the energy to push when it was time. I did take into consideration that Aislinn could react badly to the epidural and that I could end up having a c-section in the end, but that could happen even if I didn't have the epidural so I told my doula that I was ready to call the anesthesiologist. While she was reminding me of why I wanted a natural birth and asking me one more time if I was sure that I wanted drugs I had another contraction. This is where it turns into one of those movies with the crazy woman in labor. I suddenly went crazy and told her that I wanted the fucking epidural because I was sick of the fucking contractions and I told Howie that he better tell the fucking nurse that I want the anesthesiologist right fucking now! At this point it was about 5:15 am. The nurse came in to get me hooked up to the machines and to put a port in. She told me that they had to get at least one bag of fluids into me before they were allowed to call the anesthesiologist. She was doing her best to find a vein but it's like I have no veins! Nobody can find one! She tried on both sides I think twice. Then she told me that she'd try to find this other person that could try to get my port in but if she couldn't find a vein we'd have to wait until 7:00 am when some sort of amazing vein wizard would be in. The thought of waiting until 7:00 am to have my port put in and then waiting to get through a bag of fluids before they call the anesthesiologist made me crazy. I begged her to find a vein, any vein, anywhere, just please put the fucking thing in and hook me up to some fucking fluids so that I could get the epidural. The next lady got it in and we were good to go. The anesthesiologist didn't show up until 7:00 am though because this girl across the hall had to have a c-section because she pushed for like 30 minutes and nothing seemed to work. We could hear her whole team of friends, family, nurses, and doctor yelling and coaching. I laid in the bed in intense pain completely shaking and it seemed that Aislinn's back was against my back which was giving me the worse back pain I have ever felt in my entire life.

When the anesthesiologist was there and prepping me for my epidural the shaking was pretty bad and he asked me if I could please get that under control. While he played with my spine I was doing my best to keep my uncontrollable shaking under control, manage the contraction, ignore the intense back pain, and breathe. I did it though, because it meant that soon there would be NO PAIN. It also meant that I wouldn't end up paralyzed. Within minutes I was numb and didn't even realize it. I had my next contraction and they asked me if I felt it. I had no idea I even had one! It was great! The doctor came in to check up on me. I was only 4 to 5 cm dilated so she decided that she was going to give me some pitocin to help things move along. After she left and the nurse was giving me the pitocin Howie and I made some calls to our family to update them on my lack of progress. At 8:00 am we all fell asleep and woke up around 10:00 am when I started to feel a little bit of pressure. The nurse checked me and I was about 7 or 8 cm dilated. I continued to try sleeping some more but around 10:30 am or so the pressure started to get really bad. Although I wasn't really feeling pain the pressure was pretty intense and I had to breathe through each contraction. I was feeling the urge to push but my doula told me not to push yet because if I pushed too early the tiny bit that was left of my cervix could swell up and prolong things. So she helped me with my breathing so that I could avoid pushing. Around 10:45 am the nurse came back to check on me and I told her that I really wanted to push but I was doing my best not to. She decided it was time to check my cervix again and sure enough I was ready to go! She told me I could start pushing with my next contraction. I was so excited because I was so sick of fighting the urge to push and was sure that pushing would actually feel better. Things suddenly started to happen, the doctor showed up and everyone started to help me push. The pain and pressure was amazing! Unbelievable! It scared the shit out of me, but I put my chin to my chest and pushed into my bottom like they said to. I told them when it was over that I didn't want to do that again, that I wasn't ready for her to come out of me or that I didn't want her to come out anymore. They were all pretty much like "it's too late for that, it's about to happen". The nurse told me that if I kept pushing like I just did that Aislinn would be out soon. Another contraction came along quickly and the doctor hadn't even put on her gloves yet. I pushed hard, just like they told me to push. I could feel her moving down through my pelvis and I could feel that she was really close to crowning or was crowning. I screamed at the end of that push because it hurt so much. The pain didn't really scare me or make me want to stop though, I wanted to push, I had to push. They all told me not to scream, only to push. I asked them if it had been a good push though, before I screamed and they all said that I was doing great. The doctor made a little joke that I was moving so fast that she wasn't sure she'd be able to get her gloves on. That's when I actually apologized for allowing things to move along so quickly. They all laughed and told me not to say sorry for that and the doctor said that it was actually very considerate of me to push so well or something. I clearly watch too many of those baby shows and was expecting to push out the baby's head and then maybe be told not to push because maybe the cord would be around her neck or something and then be told to push another couple of times. Who knows, but I wasn't sure that she was even close enough yet, maybe I'd have to push some more to get the baby to move down and out. I pushed again as hard as I could right through to my bottom and I definitely felt her crowning. The doctor told me to push again and I said, "Really? I don't feel like I have to push right now. Are you sure I should push now?" and she told me that she wanted me to push right then, so I gave her another really hard push and I felt all of this stretching, pressure and then relief. It did kind of hurt though and it was such a surprise that I shouted "What the fuck was that?!" and they told me that she was out and placed her on top of me. I instantly felt guilty that one of the first words my daughter heard out of my mouth was the "F Word". I actually said to everyone that I can't believe that's the first thing she heard me say and the nurse told me that it was ok, that it was the first word her baby heard her say too. I looked down at my baby girl laying on top of me and everything was just so surreal. I couldn't believe I was looking at MY baby. I put one hand on her head and the other on her body and said hello to her and told her that I was her mommy. The whole world suddenly seemed so different and it was so hard for me to completely wrap my head around the fact that she was actually my baby.

They took her to a little table off to the side of my bed to assess her. Howie and the doula disappeared to take a closer look at her while my doctor and the nurse were collecting the cord blood for the cord blood registry, delivering my placenta and stitching me up. Everyone kept telling me what a good job I did, that I pushed so well. I laughed and joked around with the doctor and nurse while trying to get a glimpse of my daughter past the crowd of people surrounding her. Howie and the doula took turns coming over to me to tell me that she looked great, that she wasn't a dwarf, she was healthy, and to show me pictures. After a few moments they brought her over to me. Her eyes were wide open and she was very aware. Howie and I spoke to her and she looked at us both like she knew that she had heard our voices before. After I was stitched up and all was done the doula said goodbye and the room emptied out so that Howie and I could spend some time alone with Aislinn. We were both instantly in love with her and just took it all in. Every moment with her since then has been perfect. I don't think either of us have ever been this happy in our lives. We have a family! Our own little family!

So, here she is, all cleaned up and perfect! Introducing Aislinn Madison born on January, 29th 2007 at 11:03 am weighing in at 6 lbs. 10.6 oz and measuring 19 1/4 inches in length.

Holy Shit!!! This is it!!!

2007-01-28T19:38:00.000-05:00

Yes, no fucking joke! My water just came gushing out. We were sitting on the couch and I felt a pop and then a trickle and then I jumped up screaming "OH MY GOD!!! MY WATER BROKE!" as I ran across the living room with water gushing out of me. Howie jumped up and told me that it was ok. Everything suddenly became real and I realized, I'M GOING TO HAVE A BABY FOR REAL. I'M GOING TO GO INTO LABOR, PUSH A BABY OUT AND COME HOME WITH A BABY! It's seriously real right now. Seriously real! It's a little bit scary and exciting. Scary though, because I'm going to push a baby out of me, maybe, who knows. But she's coming. Ok, that's it. I need to go sleep. That's what my doula said, sleep!

Howie will update once our little baby has arrived! OUR BABY!!! OH MY GOD!!!

Coming Soon?

2007-01-26T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess no matter what Aislinn is coming soon, but my blood pressure was a tad high when I went in for my non-stress test today. 140/90. They didn't find any protein in my urine so right now there's no reason for me to be admitted to the hospital. Because of my family history they decided to have me do a 24 hour urine test starting tomorrow. I have a lovely jug that I will begin peeing in tomorrow morning. On Monday morning I will go in for some blood tests and drop off my jug o' pee before I have my last (I hope) biophysical ultrasound. The doctor will hopefully have the test results by the end of the day on Monday or early on Tuesday. If I have preeclampsia I will of course then be admitted to the hospital and have labor induced.

Other than that, Aislinn looks good! She was very responsive during the NST, as usual. The doctor was very happy with that. Now it's just a matter of time. One way or another we'll see her soon.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last blog. It helps to get opinions from others who are not directly involved. I think that it would be best to let Aislinn come whenever she wants and only induce if the doctor feels it's necessary, which may happen early next week anyway.

No Baby Yet

2007-01-24T13:20:00.001-05:00

Nope, no baby. Two days ago I lost a big glob of goo which I assume was my mucus plug and that the blood that I had a week or so back was not exactly a mucus plug but still called bloody show, I don't know. I thought it was all the same thing but whatever. As long as they are signs that she's aware that she needs to vacate at some point soon that's just fine. Braxton Hicks? They are really starting to fucking hurt now. They will be coming along consistently for an hour or two and then just flat out stop. A couple of days ago I fell asleep on the couch, and when I say sleep I mean coma sleep where almost nothing can wake you up, and I began having some really hardcore contractions that would wake me up but I was still too tired to look at the clock and time them. I'd fall right back to sleep. Finally I did wake up after one of them hurt like a wicked bitch and that's when I freaked out that maybe the contractions had become closer together and more intense and I was pissed at myself for being so tired I that I didn't wake up to pay any attention to what was going on when they began. So, I called Howie to tell him that I think the contractions were possibly maybe realish because they REALLY hurt even when I changed positions and started to walk around. I started to time them, they were about 10 minutes apart for almost an hour and then they stopped. It was a good fire drill but certainly wasn't the real thing.

Howie and I are doing what we can to move things along. We've had sex, which resulted in Aislinn getting into a really uncomfortable position where she was putting pressure on a nerve that sent this awful shooting pain right down through to my urethra. So, Plan B is to just do that thing that you do when you're alone... or with your man, however you like to do that. Just no sex! Usually that just causes one massive contraction and nothing else, but I'll keep trying. At least it's fun. A couple of times I've had some strong coffee, I guess it's possible that the caffeine could cause labor, but so far I think it has only changed her sleeping pattern. If I weren't so damn tired almost 85% of the day then I'd probably walk from here to FL trying to induce labor, but everything I read says that being really tired is normal and to just sleep as much as possible right now because if I were to go into labor I'd need my energy. That's no joke because after some of the hardcore contractions I've had I've felt super tired. It wears you out! I've been rolling around on my birthing ball hoping that it will help me dilate. My next plan is garlic! People say that spicy food sometimes works, another old wives tale, and I know that garlic isn't the spiciest food in the world but it gets her moving when I do eat it and with the amount of acid reflux that I have been experiencing I don't think I could handle any Mexican food. My doula suggested that we make plans for her due date because babies tend to come when you have something you need to do and if she doesn't come at least we are doing something fun with our night rather than sitting at home obsessing about how she's due and still not here. The 31st is not only her due date but PAY DAY!!! So, Howie and I will head over to The Melting Pot and have some VERY GARLICKY cheese fondue, and then of course the rest of the super fabulous Melting Pot meal. Mmmmmmm! I also have a coupon for free chocolate fondue, which I am REALLY looking forward to. If the garlic doesn't get labor started (which it probably won't) I will spend all of the next morning before heading of to the doctor running up and down the stairs, maybe take a brisk walk around the complex. I don't know that any of this is going to work. It probably won't, she's going to come when she wants to come.

Here's the issue, and it shouldn't be an issue but it is. My brother is coming to visit from February 1st to the 5th. On the 5th he flies back to VA and then the military is sending him away for 2 1/2 years on the 7th. He's not going to be in a seriously dangerous location or doing anything seriously dangerous, so it's not that I'm so much worried about him never coming home just that he won't be back for 2 1/2 years. I love my brother, I do, because he's my brother and once upon a time we were really close. Now, well, he thinks we're close because I give him less shit than our sister does. See, my brother is the Prodigal Son. He wasn't always a self centered jerk, well, it wasn't always this bad and I guess that he is this bad because my mother has made him the Prodigal Son. I don't want to lay it all on her because I love her and I know that she loves all of us, I think that she just makes a huge deal about him because he's so distant (emotionally and physically) and now he's turned into this jackass! Here's some background on the situation. Every year my mom writes this Christmas letter to everyone she knows to update them on the family. The letter is pretty much all about my brother, we'll just call him PS for Prodigal Son. In the letter she'll go on and on about all of PS's yearly achievements and the few times that my sister, S, and I are mentioned it's tied in with a PS statement. For example one year I was mentioned twice. Once because PS bought me a t-shirt while away in another country, and then again because I went to visit him in DC during the summer. By the way, I wasn't visiting DC to see PS that summer, I wanted to visit because Howie was his roomie and I hadn't seen Howie in a year! My sister was only mentioned once because she received a t-shirt but didn't visit him in DC. That year my sister became the director for this private school and it was a big deal for her, but my mother forgot about that. Everyone ALWAYS travels to DC for every single event in my brother's life, but when my sister gave birth to our niece he couldn't take time off to see her. I was in the middle of an IVF cycle and begged my doctor to let me leave for 48 hours without any monitoring so that I could see my niece, my brother wasn't doing anything, he just didn't want to use any leave. He has plenty of leave by the way. Two months after our niece, J, was born my brother was receiving his masters and his graduation was in RI. He was given about 4 or 5 days of leave, he could have made the hour and a half trip from RI to CT to see J, but instead he wanted S to bring J to RI because he didn't want to waste his time driving to and from CT. If she hadn't brought J to RI he wouldn't have seen her until he came to visit right at the end of December. She's about 9 months old and he's only seen her twice. In the past 9 months family has gone out of their way to visit him for various events he feels are important about 4 or 5 times. When he was here at the end of December and beginning of January he stayed at my house for two nights. Howie and I drove up to Northern CT to have dinner with the whole family and bring my brother back to our house. So, the first night we got home kind of late, about 10:00 pm. PS and his girlfriend, JB, were planning on heading to NYC early the next morning. JB went to bed almost right away and PS stayed up until about 1:00 or 2:00 am playing some stupid computer game. He wanted me to get up at 7:00 am to wake them up, which I did. JB got up right away to shower and get dressed. JB didn't roll out of bed until 10:00 am, then showered and got dressed. Howie and I were planning on taking them out for Mexican food, their favorite food, that night because it was the ONLY night we were all going to be able to go out alone together. When Howie and I dropped them off at the train my brother made a comment that he was thinking of doing this and that so they would probably not be back until 8:30 or 9:00 pm. Howie was a kind of irritated by this and said that he didn't want to eat that late and didn't want me to eat that late either. Honestly, I could have had two dinners, I normally do anyway, but it was just that my brother was thinking of himself rather than others that pissed Howie off. So, JB said no, that they would be back around 6:30 or 7:00 pm like they had planned. PS said "well, we'll see" and got out of the car. Around 5:00 pm my brother called to bitch about how he and JB had been fighting all day about the time they were coming back and that he's pissed off that he has to leave NYC before he's ready to because JB said that he was being inconsiderate of others. He said that this is the last time he'll be able to go to NYC for 2 1/2 years and he doesn't want to hear anyone tell him that he's being selfish again for the rest of his trip. This just pissed me off and it kind of hurt me to hear that. He was more upset about the fact that he wasn't going to see NYC for 2 1/2 years than the fact that if he didn't come home for dinner it would be the last time he can sit down for dinner with Howie and I for the next 2 1/2 years. Why does NYC rank higher than me? So I told him never mind, just stay in NYC, eating dinner together wasn't a big deal. I didn't want to eat dinner with him anymore if it pisses him off so much to eat with me. He said that he couldn't stay in NYC because JB had given him so much shit that he was just sick of being there. So it was already ruined for him. When we went out for dinner I think Howie and I were the only ones really talking. It wasn't worth it. Before he left to go back to VA he was 100% different. He was being all wishy washy about how this could be the last time he sees me before I become a mother. He came back to give me a hug twice before he left and even kissed my belly to say goodbye to the baby. WTF is that? He's been calling me every day to see how I am and trying to be all sweet to me, but honestly, I know that he's just hoping that I have the baby before he leaves. Not so that he can see her but because he has bought a ticket to visit from February 1st to the 5th, because my mom is worried that he won't see the baby before he goes. Maybe a piece of him really truly does want to see my baby. I'd like to believe that he cares because he and I were really close when we were younger and he used to be a really loving and protective big brother. I just don't know which person I'm dealing with anymore. I do know that regardless of how he feels about me I still love him and maybe that's because I still remember the old PS. So, the issue is, do I ask the doctor when I see her on Friday how long they'll let me go before they want to induce labor, and if she says January 6th do I ask if they could induce earlier so that my brother can see the baby? This is the guy that puts NYC before me. I really wanted my birth to happen with as little medical intervention as possible, and if I'm induced that may not happen. It could, maybe not, but could change the type of birth I end up having. Plus, I kind of want Aislinn to decide when her birthday is, not my brother. Even if my brother wasn't going away for 2 1/2 years, how often would he come and see her anyway? She might see him about 4 times, maybe 3, in that time if he was in the US. Plus, I can just see the stupid Christmas letter now, "Amy had labor induced so that PS could see Aislinn before he went away for 2 1/2 years"! My daughter's birth will be announced in the letter because of my brother! I HATE the thought of that. However, if the doctor is going to induce me close to the date that he'd be flying out and I'd give birth to her a day later then it is kind of silly that we held off one day just because my brother is a self centered jerk. I just hate the thought of inducing labor for my brother because the whole world revolves around him. I mean, my sister held off on dedicating her daughter to the church for nearly 9 months because that was when my brother would be in town, because he wouldn't have come in just for that. I almost want to wait one more day so that the induction is done because my doctor says it's time and not so that it's good timing for my brother. It's not like he'll never see her, he'll see her when she's 2 1/2 years old, or 3, whenever he gets around to seeing her after he returns. Even if he sees her when she's a day old, she's not going to remember him any better when she finally does see him again. I don't know what to do. I have no idea what I want. Any thoughts?

Week 38!!

2007-01-18T07:46:00.000-05:00

38 weeks and 1 day today! 13 days to go... hopefully no more. Who knows. Clearly the Neonatologist felt that it would be unnecessary to induce me on Tuesday. We're going to just let Aislinn come out whenever she decides it's time... which I hope isn't too much longer. I'd like to have at least one more childless weekend with my husband, so if she'd like to make her way out sometime on Sunday afternoon that would be fine.

I had a lot of funky discharge on Tuesday. It seemed more watery than it did mucusy but I didn't feel any actual leaking so I didn't think my water had broken because I was sure that it would have been obvious. It also kind of smelled nasty. Gross!!! So around 1:00 AM Howie made me call my doctor because he felt that it was possible that my water had broken, although Dr. Google said that if it was my water it wouldn't smell bad. The doctor pretty much said the same thing, it shouldn't smell bad, but she'd have me come in to the office in the morning. So, I went in and all three tests that they do to find out if your water has broken were negative. She thinks that I might have a yeast infection because of the funky odor. Last time I had a yeast infection the discharge wasn't so watery, but what the hell do I know. She took a swab to send to the lab. She also did a pelvic exam to find out if I had started to dilate yet (fun!!) and it appears that I have dilated 1 cm. Woohooo! I wish it were more like 4 cm and that I was in labor. I kind of felt let down that it was a whole lot of nothing and that I had to go home and continue to wait for something to happen.

So sometime around 12:30 AM I started cramping. These cramps seemed to come along every 8 minutes. I think I had timed about 4 or 5 of them before falling asleep. When I woke up this morning around 5:15 or so, maybe it was earlier, the cramping/contractions (???) were 3 minutes apart. It seemed odd to me that they were so consistent yet no more painful than they were when I fell asleep last night. Howie wanted me to call my doctor and was rather upset with me when I said that I wouldn't call. I mean, I woke my doctor up early Wednesday morning because I might have a yeast infection. I'd feel silly going in to the office or hospital to be hooked up to a machine that would show how pathetic my "contractions" really are and then be sent home again without a baby. I've had stronger menstrual cramps when my body is only trying to expel uterine lining, I would imagine that if my "contractions" were 3 minutes apart that it would be much more painful than they were. I didn't even have trouble chatting casually during them, my husband wouldn't have even known that I was having them if I hadn't told him. Howie and I got up and took a shower. The stupid plug in the tub doesn't work so I can't take a bath like my doula suggested trying if I'm not sure if I am having false or real labor. I was hoping that taking a warm shower would relax my body and stop the contractions if they weren't real the same way that taking a bath would. I had maybe 3 contractions while in the shower and had Howie time them for me. When I got out I only had 1 more contraction and that was it. So, it seems that it was false labor. The contractions are beginning again right now though, and are slightly more intense. If I go into labor I'll be sure to let you know, but I doubt that this baby is coming out any time soon. I feel kind of silly because I'm waiting for my body to do something and I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be like. Doctors never want you to self diagnose anything, but when it comes to labor you kind of have to. At this point I'm over analyzing EVERYTHING and I don't want to be like the boy who cried wolf. It's silly, and I'm hoping that when it's real I'll be sure that it's real. Whatever, I think that eventually this baby will come out by force rather than by choice, but we'll see.

Anyway, last night Howie and I finished up the baby's room. I put all the larger sized clothes into space saving bags and then into a big plastic tub. We have a rather large space saving bag for 3-6 month clothing, and smaller bags for the 6-9, 9-12, and 12-18 month clothing. As for clothes that she can wear immediately, we went from having almost nothing to having lots of clothes. Very nice! The closet and nearly the entire dresser are filled! I spent about 30 hours this week sketching and painting two pictures for Aislinn's room. They're ok, I'm not Monet or anything. The pictures are a little over simplified and sort of lame, but I made them for my baby. I don't know how I feel about how they look in there, but Howie seems to really love them. One is of sheep jumping a fence which we hung by the glider and night stand. The other is of the Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme. There is a square for each character from the nursery rhyme and the words to the nursery rhyme are there too. We hung that one above the bookshelf. We hung up the cute letters that Howie bought to spell out Aislinn's name above the crib and the Celtic cross that my aunt gave us is hanging above the changing table/dresser. I know, kind of confusing, a Jewish baby with and Irish name and Celtic cross. Well, she is an Irish Jew so whatever. The Celtic cross is more of a symbol of her heritage and that's just fine for us. It goes along with her very Irish name. Anyway... moving on. We picked up the cushions for the glider that we had re-upholstered so that they went along with the room better. I love them! So, I will go ahead and post those pictures for you now that the room is complete.

Spotting???

2007-01-14T15:15:00.000-05:00

Not huge news really, but I woke up this morning around 6:40 am to pee. I felt more pressure in my neather regions than I usually do. I already determined about a week or so ago that the baby had dropped because I can breathe better, eat full meals, and I look like I'm carrying lower. Since then there has been a tad more pelvic discomfort, but not really pressure like I was feeling this morning. I checked the toilet paper when I wiped and saw some blood. It was a bit dark with just the little night light in the bathroom, but I yelled "WHAT??" and turned on the light. Not much blood in the toilet and nothing that looked mucusy exactly but I still figured it might have something to do with the mucus plug or my cervix thinning out. I walked out of the bathroom and said "Howie! I'm having some bleeding, not bad bleeding, I think good bleeding." Whatever that means. He was trying to wake up and understand what was happening and I said, "I think it might have to do with the mucus plug or something, I don't know." He jumped up and shouted "WHAT???" like it was time to go to the hospital. I reminded him that the doula and everyone else said that you could lose your mucus plug either right before you go into labor or two weeks before you go into labor, it doesn't definately mean anything. Then I noticed some cramping and I said, "but I feel a lot of pressure and some cramping." Lately I've been wearing just shorts to bed, no underware, but I decided this time that I should wear some underware and a pad just in case. With the cramps and all that pressure I was feeling I asked Howie, "Well, what should I do? Shower? Sleep? People say to do both, which do I do?" He told me to lay back down and try to get some rest. I looked around our messy bedroom and thought about how Howie had just torn down the wallpaper in our bathroom so that he can paint before Tuesday when we thought I could possibly be induced. I asked if maybe I should do some cleaning. He told me no that he'd take care of that. So, I did lay back down in bed and Howie cuddled up with my belly and started to talk to Aislinn hoping that she'd start to move around for us, which she did. The cramping I had been having had stopped for about 10 minutes and then started again. It felt different from the Braxton Hicks contractions, so I wasn't sure if that's what real contractions felt like. I had also started to shake and shiver, but I have no clue what all of that was about. I wasn't cold at all, it was just uncontrollable. One thing I thought was odd was that Aislinn's movements kind of hurt and would make me jump. I obsessed for a few minutes about some things that we had to do around the house before we go to the hospital IF this was labor and then fell back to sleep. We woke up around 11:30 am and I felt fine. A rather boring story, huh? I told my mother about what had happened and she said the same thing happened to her a few days before I was born, so maybe I won't have to be induced. Who knows, it could be nothing and even if it is something it could still take two more weeks and by then I could already have her because the Neonatologist may want to induce me on Tuesday. We'll see.

We continued to prepare for Aislinn's arrival today. We went to Home Depot to buy a new light for the upstairs bathroom and some decorative hooks to hang the letters that spell Aislinn's name that we bought a week ago. We also decided to buy a new light for above the sink in the kitchen. We already have a couple of other lights at home that we have to hang, but Howie is pretty quick about that so I'm sure they'll all be up by Tuesday unless Aislinn arrives before then. Howie finished painting the bathroom and it looks SOOOOOOOOO much better now. We went grocery shopping after we went to Home Depot so that we could buy ingredients for lasagna and noodle kugel. I will make both tomorrow and then pack them away in the freezer so that we have easy to make dinners after we bring Aislinn home. While Howie was painting the bathroom I cleaned the fridge, freezer, dishes, and laundry. After Howie finished painting the bathroom he came downstairs and said that he cleaned the downstairs bathroom. I don't know, I haven't checked, but I trust him. I'm honestly more concerned about the dust bunnies behind the door in the bedroom that we ALWAYS forget to vacuum up. I swear, I'll get to that this week.

Our glider was delivered on Friday. We had ordered a glider from Pottery Barn Kids sometime around Thanksgiving. They kept pushing the delivery date back because they had the glider on backorder. After changing the delivery date two times they decided to cancel our order all together and said we'd have to reorder. That was about three weeks ago. Even if we reordered the glider it wouldn't arrive until two to three weeks after Aislinn is due. So, instead we started hunting for gliders in our area. For some reason it's difficult to get a glider that has a cushion in ANY color other than brown on short notice. We ended up buying a glider with a shit brown cushion at this store that is going out of business. The glider was half off and didn't have a foot stool to go with it. Although the cushion was the ugliest shade of brown I had ever seen it was really comfortable. I could easily sleep in this chair. We thought about the missing foot stool and realized that we have a tiny stool at home with a cute needle point rose design that my great aunt had made. The colors were close to the colors in the rug we have in Aislinn's room. We decided to buy the glider with the ugly cushion and just have it recovered at an upholstery shop. First thing Saturday morning we brought the cushions to an upholster place nearby. The cute old man told us that it would take a week to do it, which was fine with us. Today we went in to give the upholstery guy a down payment because his credit card machine wasn't working and he had already finished one cover and was just about finished with the second. He told us that we could pick it up tomorrow!! How completely perfect is that? It looked pretty good so far so we're quite happy.

One last thing I did today was start sketching the pictures I wanted to paint for Aislinn's room. One is sheep jumping over fences and the other was going to be a cow jumping over the moon. I realized that I have absolutely no skill when it comes to drawing cows. The sheep were just fine, but cows? No way. I'll have to come up with something else. I'm not exactly sure what I'll decide on but by the end of the day tomorrow I will have two pictures painted and hopefully hanging in Aislinn's room. At that point everything will be completely finished and ready for her to arrive. Well, we will need to do some basic cleaning around the house, but for the most part things are looking pretty good. I've even had some time here and there to nap. And believe me, I've REALLY needed to nap A LOT!

Hopefully my next blog post will be more exciting, but we shall see. In the meantime I hope to catch up on some of your blogs before I become a Mommy.

Holy Shit!!

2007-01-11T13:11:00.000-05:00

I had my second non-stress test today. When Dr. Hot Stuff came in to check on Aislinn's heartbeat she asked if I had talked to the Neonatologist when I went in for my last ultrasound at the hospital. I told her that I had and she asked if she had mentioned anything to me about wanting to induce labor. I was rather shocked and told her no. She told me that although Aislinn looks like she's pretty healthy she's not gaining too much weight so she'd like to move my repeat growth scan at the hospital up so that she can decide if they should induce labor next week! Can you believe that? Next week I could be holding my baby girl in my arms! Holy crap! I feel ok about it if they do because she is healthy, her lungs look good, her heart looks good, she's very active. All is good as far as we can tell except she isn't gaining much weight. So, whatever happens happens. We're ready.

During my ultrasound at my OB/GYN's office on Monday I asked if they could show me what she looks like in 3D since they have the 3D ultrasound machine. She looks sooooooooooo cute! I already suspected that and I also suspected that she looked just like her daddy. I was right! She looks just like Howie! I can't wait to see her on the outside!

Dwarfism???

2007-01-02T13:19:00.000-05:00

Howie and I had an ultrasound at the hospital last Wednesday. Everything seemed to be fine. They listened to the blood flowing through my umbilical cord, placenta looks good, baby is active, fluid level is just as it should be. It looked like my body was doing it's job and she is getting what she needs from me. She's just a small baby. Then the ultrasound tech measured her limbs and asked us if I had a first trimester screening. I said that I did and that everything seemed to be fine. She kept looking through my file and said that she didn't have a copy of it. So, she got up and said that she was going to have the doctor come in and aparently also call my OB/GYN office to have them fax over my first trimester screening. Before the doctor came in the ultrasound tech came in and out a few times kinda acting a bit weird which started to make us nervous. Finally the ultrasound tech returned with a doctor. The doctor asked us about the IVF and why we had trouble conceiving. She asked if we had any genetic abnormalities in our families. We told her that Howie's side has Tay-Sachs and Familial Dysautonomia on his side, but he is only a carier of Familial Dysautonomia. I told her that I didn't have anything on my side. She then asked us if the OB/GYN told us why I was having an ultrasound there at the hospital. I told her that I thought it was because the baby seemed small. She looked surprised and she said it was because of Aislinn's short limbs. I know they mentioned she had short limbs but I thought that they were more worried about her overall size. The doctor and the ultrasound tech then looked at the measurements and I heard them say that her limbs were measuring at or below the 5th percentile. They didn't really say much to us, the doctor just started to measure everything again. The ultrasound tech left the room a couple of times looking for the fax of my records. A few moments later someone brought them in to her. She looked through them and said that the tests showed that we were at low risk for Down Syndrome and Trisomy 18. Howie asked if either were a concern at the moment and she quickly said "NO NO NO! We just like to double check that." We sat there quietly while they remeasured and checked her organs. They said that she has a really nice looking heart and kidneys. They also said that her top lip looks good, so does her head and bones. They finally finished and told us that because her arms and legs are so small there is a chance that Aislinn may have Achondroplasia Dwarfism. The size of her limbs are the only reason they can't rule it out, but she does not have any of the other signs of dwarfism. They asked me to return for a repeat growth scan on January 19th to see how her limbs are growing, but we may not know if she has dwarfism until she's born. Of course I will love her no matter what happens but it was hard to take at first. Not because I'd love her any less, I just never expected that. On Friday we met with my OB/GYN to go over the ultrasound results and she seemed less concerned. She told us that she wouldn't tell us not to worry or that it's not possible, but they are usually very cautious and want to prepare parents for the worst. It is very possible that Aislinn is just small and has my genes. My father, sister, brother, and I all have rather short limbs, but it's not dwarfism. It's just the way we are. Even petite size pants are too long on me and my sister and I noticed how long sleeves on us usually go all the way to our nuckles. I'm thinking she's probably just fine but I'm glad they are preparing us because if she does have dwarfism we won't be surprised by it.

My OB/GYN did say that this means I need to go in once a week for an ultrasound, once a week for a non-stress test, and once a week for my regular weekly visit. That's THREE appointments a week until I have the baby. That's ok though, it's all just to make sure that she's ok so that's fine with me. I have a bio-physical profile ultrasound in a couple of hours. It's nice to see her so often, I just wish it wasn't necessary.

You have gestational diabetes... JUST KIDDING!!!

2006-12-23T21:10:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's right! No joke! The endocrinologist had my blood drawn at my last appointment to have some tests done and it appears that my blood glucose levels have been so good for the past four weeks because I DON'T HAVE GESTATIONAL DIABETES AFTER ALL!!! It's gone! Seriously! So instead of losing 3 lbs. I could have been gaining weight, but it was so much more fun to avoid carbs and fast for 2 hours at a time. Wooohooooo! Perhaps it would have been best for me to do the 3 hour glucose test BEFORE they sent me to the endocrinologist. Oh well, I have been feasting on carbs all day and if feels great. I no longer feel deprived. I'm full and healthy and it's so wonderful to eat again!!! Tomorrow morning I'm going to have french toast and sausage for breakfast with a huge glass of juice and a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream. SWEET!!! HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!!

My Very Tiny Baby

2006-12-22T12:13:00.000-05:00

On Monday I went to the endocrinologist to discuss my gestational diabetes. She looked at my diet records that show what I'm eating and my blood sugar levels. She said that my levels look so good that I can stop fasting for two hours between meals! Woohooooo! More food! I can also test just two times a day if I feel like it. Even better! Because I had lost weight on the low carb diet that she put me on she asked if I had been hungry. I wasn't too hungry at first, but you can all see from my last post that in the past couple of weeks I had been. I was sneaking in an extra meal at the end of the day before bed because I was just so freaking hungry! So, I told her yes, that fasting for two hours was too much so I was really happy that I didn't have to anymore. She said that she didn't want the diet to make me lose weight so if I'm hungry to just eat. Thank you!!!

On Wednesday I had an appointment with my OB/GYN, Dr. Talks-to-Much. She was pleased that my blood sugar levels were so good. We discussed my birth plan and she felt that pretty much all of it was fine. She even told me that if my water hadn't broken or hadn't been broken for too long and the waters were clear then I could stay at home until my contractions were 3 minutes apart since Howie and I live so close to the hospital. YAY!!! I was quite excited about that but the idea of waiting until they're 3 minutes apart makes Howie a bit nervous. We'll see how it goes. Before the appointment was over Dr. Talks-to-Much decided that we should move my ultrasound up so that we could see if Aislinn was growing too large because of my gestational diabetes. Luckily they had an opening for 1 pm on Thursday (yesterday). I took it and called Howie to let him know about the change so that he could talk to his boss.

Howie got the day off. We were quite excited about seeing the baby again and figured that since Aislinn measured just a little bit small last time that she probably wouldn't have grown too big from the gestational diabetes. The ultrasound tech did all the measurements and said that Aislinn was measuring small, quite small. I figured, ok, that's fine. That's so much better than a huge baby and I was glad that the gestational diabetes didn't hurt her. I told her that Howie was 6 lbs. 10 oz. and I was 7 lbs. 3 oz. at birth. Then she told us that Aislinn's legs and arms were measuring at about 30 weeks and her head and body were measuring at about 34 weeks. Huh? Tiny limbs? What the hell does that mean? She asked how tall Howie and I were a few times and she said that sometimes the baby gets different pieces of each parents so that it may not be a problem. Images of tiny chicken wing arms were whirling around my head and I'm just thinking of how I had huge Hobbit feet when I was little so I wonder if she'll have huge feet attached to her tiny legs. What else can I pass along? My buck teeth? My freckles? Maybe she'll have two different colored eyes like my father! Sure, I think that my father's two different colored eyes are super cool but he is very sensitive about people noticing them. Anyway, then the ultrasound tech told us that she weighs about 4 lbs. 9 oz. right now. She checked the computer and that puts Aislinn in the 15th percentile. She seemed a bit concerned but wasn't saying much because she can't, she's not the doctor. We left the office a bit concerned but I wasn't freaking out too much. I started to wonder if other things were slowly developing too, like her brain? It was lunch time and I decided, maybe a carb fest would help her grow. Maybe a trip to McDonalds? Maybe this low carb diet that made me lose weight wasn't helping her? On the way home we called our parents to tell them about the ultrasound. Howie's cell phone was pretty loud and I could hear his mother say that maybe the baby is small because I'm starving myself and now I can stop doing that. My mouth dropped open. What the fuck?! By the damn way, on Sunday we were at his parent's house for Chanukkah and except for a few veggies and a block of cheese there wasn't a thing there that wasn't LOADED with carbs. I had some veggies, water, and one potato pancake during the 5 hours we were there. Once people left they took out the brisket and let me eat. They did say sorry that their friends stayed so long and they had intended on feeding me earlier. So, who is she to say that I STARVE myself? I HAD NOTHING TO EAT!!! Anyway, it really hit me. I had been losing weight, yeah, I may eat 2 steaks at dinner, I may have been sneaking in an extra meal at the end of the day, but I couldn't gain weight. I lost 3 lbs. This could be because of my weight. It could be because I'm still not up to my pre-pregnancy weight. What if it's not just her legs and arms? What if her brain isn't developed enough? What is she has a learning disability because I lost weight even though I wasn't even trying to. I was eating as much as I could, but I was eating the way the doctor told me to eat. I thought I was doing the right thing for her, I thought that because I was eating healthfully that she would be a healthy baby. She hasn't been born yet but I'm already a horrible mother! By the time Howie had hung up with his mother I was in tears. He told me that I didn't do anything wrong, that she didn't know what she was talking about and just forget what she said. How can I forget that? It's my worst fear, any mother's worst fear, did I do something to harm my child? If she isn't right it's MY fault. We tried for two years to have a baby and I might have totally fucked her up? All I had to do was keep the baby alive inside of me, make her healthy, and I couldn't. I couldn't get pregnant and I couldn't grow a baby properly. Howie ended up talking to his mother and father about the comment and then it turned into an entire drama. Basically she said she never would imply that it was my fault. I didn't know that it had to be implied, she said it right out, but ok. His parents are upset because we should know that they would never think that we've done something to harm our child, that they love us and all of this stuff. Whatever, I know they love us, I know they love Aislinn, I just wanted an apology. I wanted her to say sorry for making an incredibly insensitive comment and that she will think before she speaks next time. I'm not trying to be a bitch, but what if someone said something like that to her? She'd be extremely hurt. Anyway, it's not about that anymore. Her pity party continues but I'm more concerned with Aislinn's health at the moment. A little after Howie and I got home after the ultrasound we got a call from the doctor's office. They scheduled an ultrasound for me at the hospital on the 27th because they are concerned about the baby being so small. I also have another appointment next week with one of the doctors to discuss the ultrasounds. So, I guess I'm pretty much seeing the doctors on a weekly basis starting now rather than in two weeks. I was bad and looked up info on babies that are small for gestational age (SGA babies). In some cases they end up totally normal, others have some retardation and some die. I'm trying to keep it together right now. I spoke to my mother and she pointed out that my dad has small arms and legs too, and he is totally normal. He doesn't even look oddly shaped to me. Maybe for a girl, but I'll take oddly shaped over retarded or dead. Then she asked me if I wear petite pants and I realize, duh, yes I do and even then the petite pants are sometimes still too long for me. So, I have freaky short legs and didn't even take notice. I don't know if my arms are short, I guess my mom only noticed that my dad's arms are short because she has to buy him shirts. Women's shirts don't have an arm length, but I guess that in general they are a bit long on me. So, perhaps Aislinn was just unfortunate enough to get tiny limbs from my gene pool. If that's the worst thing she gets we're in pretty good shape. As for her low weight, like we told the ultrasound tech, Howie was a pretty tiny baby, especially for a boy, and he's perfect. Well, I think he's perfect. So, right now I'm thinking that she's going to be fine, that it's just our genetics and thanks to that she'll be easy to push out. Right? She's going to be perfect, beautiful and smart. No matter what she's like I love her and nothing else matters.

I'M HUUUUUUUUUUUNGRY!!!!

2006-12-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

OMFG!!!! In 6 minutes I can finally test my blood sugar level. This whole fasting for 2 fucking hours when pregnant is bullshit. I'm chugging water to try to fill up my belly but SERIOUSLY!!! ALL THAT DOES IS CREATE A VERY SLOSHY ANGRY SEA IN MY BELLY AS MY DAUGHTER BEATS MY BELLY LIKE IT'S A DRUM AND RAMS HER HEAD INTO MY CERVIX! I feel sea sick! I'm so hungry that I'm dizzy and disoriented and I'm posting so that I can do something other than watch the clock while waiting to do my stupid ass blood test. At the moment my husband is enjoying somebody's birthday cake at work. All I can say is FUCK PEOPLE WHO CAN EAT CAKE!!! Sorry to all of you who eat cake, but I'm having a bad moment, I'm not myself right now. Ugh! All I want to do is eat ALL THE TIME now, and I can't. I have to eat a little and wait freaking 2 hours and then eat and then wait 2 hours. This waiting 2 hours thing is bullshit. I want to eat when I want to eat. I hope that she isn't born a minute past 6 weeks and 6 days because I look forward to the moment that I can start eating whenever I want again. Not only WHENEVER I want but I can eat WHATEVER I want. Yes, CAAAAAAAAARRRRRRBBBBBSSSSSSSSSS!!!! Seriously! But right now it's not even a carb problem because I'm dreaming about eating a large glazed ham, beef brisket, rotisserie chicken, and a very large turkey... ok... with A LOT OF STUFFING. I guess I do want carbs. After I eat all of those animals I'd like to have an entire package of Oreos or Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies and a gallon of milk. Instead I'm going to go have some boring salad and a burger with a low carb bun.

Thanks for helping me pass the time! Later!

Seven Weeks to Go!

2006-12-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

Not much has changed since last week. We received the nightstand and bookshelf. Howie put the bookshelf together the day we got it and then we rearranged the nursery. We also bought a curtain rod for the window, more clothes, mattress, mattress pad, boppy, monitor, and a diaper champ for the living room. All we need now is the glider and curtains.

On Sunday we put the playard together. There's a place for me to hook up my iPod. We have it fully stocked with diapers, diaper rash cream, wipes, and onesies. We finally bought me some pajamas, nursing bras, a robe, and a pair of slippers to wear at the hospital. I'll be packing that up in my bag tonight.

The low carb diet that the endocrinologist put me on is working. My blood sugar looks good, but I really do miss carbs. I've asked my mother to bring banana bread, beef noodle casserole, and some chocolate chip cookies after the baby is born. The first thing I'd like to do once she's born is overdose on carbs. I think I'm going to make some noodle kugel before I go into labor and freeze it. Howie and I are thinking of asking his mother for some matzo ball soup and the sweet meatballs she makes. SOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!! Right now I weigh 3 lbs. less than I did when I became pregnant. I was up to my pre-pregnancy weight but after starting this low carb diet I've lost weight again. Again, the doctors seem to think this is ok so I'm ok with it. I'm eating like crazy, it's just that I can't gain weight. I should shut up before people start throwing eggs at me. I'm not complaining. It's just ironic that I've always been so good at gaining weight and now that I'm pregnant I can't seem to do that. I know that I'm listing off high carb foods that I plan on eating once she's born, but I really am going to continue to eat healthfully once she arrives. Maybe I'll ask my mom to skip the chocolate chip cookies.

I've been having some Braxton Hicks contractions. Some hurt but most of the time it's just a cement hard belly and a tiny bit of pressure. My body is in training for labor. Woohoo!!!... I think. I don't mind having them and at this stage I guess it's normal. Seven weeks to go!

Nesting

2006-12-07T14:25:00.002-05:00

I'm nesting. Seriously nesting. Aislinn's room is coming along. It's looking good. We're still waiting for the glider, book shelf, and nightstand. We need to buy the mattress for the crib and a floor lamp. Right now I just have the crib sheet laying in the crib. I just wanted to see what it looked like, but it would be nice to have it on a mattress. I already have the diaper caddy on the dresser/changing table filled with diapers, Balmex, and onesies. For downstairs we need a diaper champ and a swing. I don't know if I'm going to get the swing but my sister swears that it's the best thing in the world to have. We've also put together the travel system and will soon be bringing the car seat to the police station to make sure that it was properly installed, if not then we'll learn how to do it the right way. Pretty soon we'll be putting the Pack n Play/Playard together. I figured that if we put it up now we can teach the cat that it's not his to sleep in rather than trying to teach him AFTER the baby comes along. I will also, because I'm a crazy nesting freak, stock the Pack n Play changing station with diapers, wipes, and Balmex. We have onesies, receiving blankets, burp clothes, rattles, pacifiers, and books stored in the baskets that fit inside our coffee table. I know, I seem insane but when we come home from the hospital it'll be nice that it's all done and over with. We'll just have to maintain it, which may not be easy but we'll try.

Here are some pics!

Howie putting the crib together.

Feeling pretty good about his work.

That's what it looks like when all the pieces are put together.

The dresser/changing table! Yes, I realized that having the diaper champ on the right didn't make any sense and it is now on the left. That picture frame will probably be moved to the nightstand after it arrives.

A close up of the crib and sheets. The little pillow goes with the glider, but the glider has yet to arrive.

Howie putting the wheels on the travel system.

Last Saturday I vacuumed the curtains, floor, furniture, behind the furniture, walls. Then I mopped our wood floors. Howie cleaned wood furniture and moved a bunch of other junk. He also went through some mail that we hadn't paid any attention to yet. Howie and I both did laundry that night too. On Monday morning I woke up early to meet with the exterminator. I was so tired, I really wasn't ready to get up yet. Our bedroom was kind of messy so while I was getting dressed I also cleaned the room, made the bed and opened the curtains. I would love for my desire for things to be perfectly clean even if I'm barely able to keep my eyes opened would continue after Aislinn is born, but I doubt it will. Believe me, I love a clean house and I love to organize, but normally when I'm insanely tired I don't clean. I just happen to be nesting at the moment so I can clean with my eyes closed. Last night I folded sheets until 1:00 am. I never realized how many bed linens we actually have until I pulled them all out of our linen closet. They were all folded very badly too. I couldn't live with that so all of them had to be re-folded. My back was killing me when I finished, but that's ok because now everything is folded nicely.

Tonight we clean the kitchen again. The exterminator left us with some powerful cockroach buttons and told us to make a bunch of homemade fruit fly traps. We now have to keep all dishes out of the sink, wipe down counters like crazy and put away the cat's bowls at night. Poor Kirby cat can't even have water at night. He's drinking out of the toilet instead. Anyway, I broke down and bought Special K cereal last night. I came home with it and put it in the fridge. The exterminator wants us to take away any food that the cockroaches can get to out of our home for at least a month, hopefully by then they will be gone. I guess I could put cereal into those air tight containers but we don't have any at the moment. I'm mostly doing this for myself rather than to keep food away from the cockroaches because my husband still has like 3 boxes of cereal so if they want to eat they can. This morning I was really looking forward to having some Special K. Lately I've been eating a doughnut and milk for breakfast, which I probably shouldn't have but it's within my 50 carbs. The doughnuts are also in the fridge. Anyway, I know that I need to measure my Special K so that I don't go over my carbs. When I open the drawer where we store our measuring cups I find a cockroach sitting on top of them looking up at me. Then I notice a couple others in the drawer. They all run off and I slam the drawer. This drawer is right next to our silverware drawer, so I decided that the silverware has probably been touched by the gross roaches. The whole plan of having cereal went to hell from there. I decided I would go ahead and have a doughnut and milk again because I don't need any silverware to eat a doughnut. I'm so disgusted. I told Howie about my encounter and he said that we would get air tight containers for everything and we could also clean the entire kitchen. Howie thinks that the roaches are getting desperate for food which is why they were in a drawer where there isn't food looking for it. I don't know, I just think they're gross and think that they own the entire kitchen and they want to touch all of our things. I want them out of here because if they don't go I don't know how we're going to ever clean the baby's bottles because I don't know if roaches are going to be crawling all over them and the bottle brushes that we use to clean the bottles. The fruit flies are gross and they're all over everything too. The traps that Howie has made are working, but we need more of them to slow down their life cycle. The flies are all over the damn house. I've never lived in such a gross environment. WE'RE CLEEEEEEEAN!!!! Our neighbors are insanely clean, so it's not them. They had to come in our boxes, and if they did I don't know that I EVER want to put my things in storage EVER again. I can't believe how gross this is. I want them all gone in the next 8 weeks or less.

Ok, enough about the nasty infestation. Yesterday was the first day of my 32nd week of pregnancy! I can't believe the weeks are going by so quickly now. Before I go I will attach the new picture of my belly.

Single Digits!!!

2006-11-29T11:26:00.000-05:00

NINE weeks to go!!! Seriously, we're down to SINGLE digits, people!!! I'm feeling pretty good about it too.

I had an OB/GYN appointment. I'm rotating different doctors in the practice as Dr. Hot Stuff wanted me to, so on Monday I met Dr. Talks-Too-Much. My appointment was at 10:00 am, I got there at 9:50 am or so. The waiting room was full and it seems that the back-up was from Dr. Talks-Too-Much. I waited for an hour before I was called in. During my appointment I discovered that I lost a pound since being on this crazy no carb/gestational diabetes diet. Whatever, nobody seems to be worried about it. My blood pressure was 120/88... the 88 is still higher than it usually is but it seems like it's no big deal... yet. We listened to the baby's heart and it was around 130 which she said was normal for this stage. Belly size is right on track. I also got permission to go ahead and have sex with my husband again!! Woohooo!!! I know, TMI and for some people that's just gross that we still want to have sex, but whatever. It'll be at least 6 weeks after the baby is born before I can have sex with him again and who knows how long it'll be before I have enough energy to want to have sex, so it would be nice to be with my husband BEFORE the little princess arrives.

On Monday night Howie and I bought the paint for the baby's room! YAY!!! The guy at the paint store mixed the wrong color first, it was a much lighter pink. He said that he wasn't going to charge us for it if we wanted to take that too. FREE paint! Howie took it without a thought. Now we have a gallon of light pink paint... what are we going to use it for? Howie's first thought was using it for the trim in the room. That's not going to happen, it's not in the design and the trim already looks so nice and perfectly white. His second thought was to paint our downstairs bathroom pink. We have a nautical theme going on in there at the moment and it's the one bathroom that our guests will see. Pink isn't the color for that bathroom. If he's dying to paint any room pink the only one I'd say yes to is our full bathroom upstairs, but even then I don't know. Howie and I both want that one to be blue. I think the only place that this light pink is acceptable is the baby's closet. We'll see, Howie didn't want to paint the closet. I'd paint it myself but I'm not allowed to do that. Last night Howie and I taped off the molding in the baby's room and tonight the painting begins!!! YAY!! Howie's parents ordered the crib, dresser, and rug on Sunday. This weekend my parents will be buying us the glider. My mother also wanted us to do the cord blood banking and told us that she'd pay for that. Howie and I are going to buy the bookcase and side table. I feel much more relaxed now that things are moving along in the baby's room.

I called the pediatrician's office yesterday. They took my info and told me that some guy would be calling me back to tell me when the next "Meet the Doctors Night" is scheduled. I didn't know that there was any such thing. It's nice that it takes place at night so that Howie doesn't have to take time off of work.

We still have a list of things to do. Next Wednesday we're going to go to the police department to learn how to properly install the car seat. My doula is sending us a list of postpartum doulas and baby nurses for us to interview. We're not going to have both, we just don't know which we want. My bag for the hospital is half packed and half of the outfit the baby will come home in is picked out. She'll be wearing the sweater and hat that Howie wore home from the hospital when he was a baby. Next Monday an exterminator is coming to our house to help us with our cockroach and fruit fly problem. The whole bug invasion is just gross. I think the bugs crawled into our boxes while our stuff was in storage, now they're living in our home. I want them out of here before the baby is born. I need to wash all of the baby clothes, blankets, and towels. The linen closet needs to be reorganized so that the baby tub will fit. After that we should only have a few things to organize and some baby things to put together. I'm hoping that being prepared for her to come at any time will make her want to stay in there until her due date. I know that if I wasn't prepared she'd come early.

Aislinn is getting really heavy. My back, right hip, and pelvis are killing me. I can no longer sleep on my side because it only makes the pain worse. Don't worry, that doesn't mean I'm being bad and sleeping on my back. I've been sleeping sitting up. It's actually a lot easier for me to get out of bed this way too. I am still using my Snoogle pillow. I kind of create a circle with it and put my butt in the middle so that the pillow goes around my back, hips and under my legs. I also have two pillows behind my back and my tiny kidney bean shaped pillow supporting my lower back. I think that's how I'll be sleeping until the end of the pregnancy. It'll be really nice to sleep any way I want after she arrives. Well, I'm sure by then any kind of sleep in any position anywhere will be nice.

I'm also looking forward to eating carbs and deli meat again. I'll continue to eat healthy, but it'll be great to have more variety in my diet. I can tell you that it will be a long time before I eat eggs again, because right now I eat eggs for breakfast and egg salad for lunch and it's REALLY getting old. It was just the easiest thing to do in the first week, we're coming up with other options. After the exterminator visits I'll be able to buy some Special K without worrying about cockroaches getting into it. Special K is one of the few cereals that don't have too many carbs. Howie isn't as worried about cockroaches in his cereal so he's still eating it. I hate watching him eat things like cereal, stuffing, mashed potatoes. If I didn't suspect that cockroaches and rolled around in his Lucky Charms I'd tackle him to the floor and inhale the entire bowl. I don't even like sugary bad cereals but at this point I'm desperate and I'd take it. I'd trade my scrambled cheese eggs for some Fruit Loops if I could. If I got my hands on some pancakes right now I'd probably cry and then kiss them all over. Our last trip to the grocery store was sad. I wandered down the baking aisle, ice cream aisle, and the bakery with my mouth watering. From time to time I'd pick up an item and look at the nutrition label and then with much disappointment and extreme sadness I would return the item to the shelf. I'm already day dreaming about what Aislinn's 1st birthday cake will be like just because I want to eat it. It's ok, my diet is making her healthier. I'm going to go eat some low carb yogurt now.

Thanksgiving and the Very Bad Cold

2006-11-26T13:19:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Howie and I spent the holiday with my sister, brother-in-law, and 7-month old niece. Dinner was full of many carbs I craved but couldn't eat. I have been waiting for Thanksgiving dinner since my first trimester. The turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie!!! I was only able to eat 3 servings of turkey, one bite of mashed potatoes, one bite of stuffing, 3 bites of green bean casserole, and one bite of cranberry sauce. My sister didn't have pumpkin pie because she doesn't like it, but she did have pumpkin cheese cake, which I still couldn't eat. She also had chocolate cream pie and apple pie, those aren't allowed on my diet either. After watching people eat their yummy desserts while I drank two sips of black tea that seemed to have pregnancy friendly ingredients I decided that I was going to have a tiny sliver of chocolate cream pie. Two hours later my blood sugar was fine. That doesn't mean that I'm going to run around eating sweets like it doesn't matter, it's just for one meal. Ok, and maybe if my blood sugar is low on Chanukkah and Christmas I'll have one tiny piece of dessert again.

On Friday morning I woke up to Aislinn kicking me like crazy and wasn't able to fall back to sleep. That was fine, I cuddled up with Howie and started to think about things that needed to be done around the house. The night before when we were at my sister's house watching our niece crawl around their living room floor I think Howie and I both realized that Aislinn is going to need room to have tummy time and eventually crawl and walk around. Things were pretty tight in our living room/dining room area the way it was set up. I started to rearrange the living room furniture in my head while Howie slept. When he woke up I thought I had it all worked out. We were going to have to move the bar into the dining room area, the couch had to go against the wall and we needed to move the whole entertainment center to another wall. Luckily Howie was up for moving furniture after he woke up. We moved the bar first. When we stood back and looked at the bar next to the sideboard I decided that the china cabinet had to be moved to the other side of the sideboard in order for things to be even. After Howie moved the china cabinet, which was very scary because it's so old and almost completely made of glass and contains lots of glass, I kind of thought that maybe that wall looked too crowed. Howie said that he thinks it looks good mostly because if he was going to have to move it back again he was going to lose his mind. I decided to ignore that wall until we finished moving the rest of the furniture. The next thing he moved was the couch, then the entertainment center, and then finally our chair, side table and small chest of drawers. I wasn't so sure about the new layout at first. I sat on the couch kind of unhappy with things but now it's starting to grow on me. Howie seems to really like it. We now have room for the playard, diaper champ, swing, playmat, and ExerSaucer. Yes, all of that and eventually a crawling baby. We also managed to reorganize my desk, the chest of drawers, and clear out the junk that we've been keeping in the baskets in our coffee table. Instead of random computer junk and CDs that I no longer listen to, the baskets now contain things like extra receiving blankets, burp cloths, bibs, onesies, small books, and some toys. That way we have a few things we'll need downstairs so that we don't always have to run up to the nursery to get something.

While we were moving things around and kicking up dust I thought I was having an allergy attack. When it hadn't disappeared by Saturday I realized that I actually had a cold. Our plan for Saturday was to head down to New Jersey because Howie's parents were serving Thanksgiving dinner, part 2. I was looking forward to seeing Howie's friends that I haven't seen since June. His parents wanted us to stay overnight so that we could all go to Pottery Barn Kids today to buy the baby furniture we had hoped to buy a month ago. When we got to Howie's parent's house I felt pretty awful but I tried to socialize with the guests while also keeping a safe distance. After everyone had arrived Howie's brother brought in the gift that he had bought for us. It was our travel system!!! We were so excited to get that because without it we can't bring the baby home from the hospital. We love it! After that I sat down at the kitchen table to have some pregnancy friendly tea. I guess I was looking especially shitty because Howie and his parents decided that I needed to lay down until dinner was served. When I came out for dinner I felt like I had a huge brain cloud. I was so out of it and not at all myself. Eating and drinking a bunch of water did make me feel a little bit better though. Once people finished eating and started chatting Howie encouraged me to go lay down again, which I did. He woke me up for dessert. I cheated again by having one small oatmeal raisin cookie with some water. It was tasted REALLY good, and my blood sugar was also good when I tested it two hours later. Howie was worried about me so he told his parents that we were going to head back home after their guests left. That way we'd be close to my doctor and our hospital if my cold got worse.

It was good to be home in my own environment. The first thing I did when we got home was take a really hot shower. That cleared my head a bit so that I'd be able to breathe when I went to sleep. Howie had already filled the humidifier and put it next to the bed for me. When I got into bed he lotioned and rubbed my feet. Before I completely passed out he brought me some toast and juice. Yes, juice! I know that my endocrinologist said NO JUICE but screw her. I have a cold and drinking milk and water doesn't help. Ok, water is good, but it doesn't soothe a sore throat. Milk only makes me more congested. So, yes, I'm drinking LIGHT orange juice. Howie had to sleep on the couch so that he wouldn't catch my cold. I didn't sleep well at all. I slept for maybe 15 minutes at a time until about 5:00 am and then I was out cold. Howie woke me up and served me breakfast in bed. Eggs, toast, and orange juice. About five minutes later I was coughing quite hard which at first made me lose control of my bladder and totally pee myself so I ran to the toilet to take care of that situation. After I flushed the toilet I started to cough again, but this time I coughed so hard that I was sure I was going to throw up. I called for Howie and told him to quickly distract me with a story, maybe then I wouldn't lose my breakfast. He started to tell me the story about how he was attacked by a duck somewhere and that someday he'd like to take Aislinn to this place with the angry ducks. When he asked me if I'd like to bring her there to I threw up my entire breakfast in the sink and then cried. Other than that I think I'm starting to feel a little bit better. Howie has insisted that I stay in bed all day. He says he wants me to rest up and get better, but I know that I've been quarantined so that he doesn't get sick before his interview tomorrow. So far it seems to be working out for us both, but I'm finding it hard to stay in bed. I've started nesting and all I can think about are things that need to be done around the house. Oh well, at least it's just for one day. I shouldn't complain because I know there are women out there on bedrest and it's much worse for them.

The Baby Shower and the Doctor Appointment

2006-11-20T17:12:00.000-05:00

My baby shower was wonderful! I had a great time. The theme was Little Pumpkin and the colors were magenta, light pink, orange, and green. It was so good to see my family and friends, although I spent most of my time reminiscing with my friends. The gift table and floor around it was completely filled. Howie and my father-in-law crashed the shower to watch me open the gifts. We got our pack n play, high chair, ExerSaucer, baby papasan, and mobile. We also received many clothes, blankets, bibs, stuffed animals and books. I love them all. The big gift that is actually just on loan is the family bassinet. Everyone in the family since 1932 has slept in it. I guess the tradition is fairly new considering it started with my father's first cousin, but it's still nice that the family has one. There's a list of all the babies who have slept in the bassinet that we keep in a frame. Once Aislinn is born her name and birth date will be added to the list.

When Howie and I got home I couldn't wait to put some things away in the baby's closet. We received all of the closet organizers that we registered for and I just couldn't wait to see how well they organized!

Look at all of those diapers, two baskets full. The little critters in the blue wooden box next to the baskets are Scrubby Buddies from when I worked at Bath and Body Works many, many years ago. I've never used them, but I collected them all. Now they're discontinued but every once in a while they'll throw one into a gift set. I figured that Aislinn might like them, so there they are. Can you believe there are baby clothes in the closet? I couldn't believe it. I love to look at them. In 10 weeks I'll have a baby that will be wearing those clothes! Tiny itty bitty clothes! I'M GOING TO HAVE A BABY!!! Yeah, I know that's old news but now that we have all of these baby things I'm starting to believe it.

And a little lamb to hang on the door when our little baby girl is sleeping.

I was thinking that I should buy Aislinn some rubber duckies because nobody thought to give us any. Seriously, look at that fleet of ducks. Don't mess with them! They will attack! Actually, I think it's a good thing that we have extras because I remember being totally in love with my rubber duckie when I was little, but after a while it got moldy inside and my mom had to throw it away and that just broke my heart. All I had left were my weebles in their boat and my sister's hand-me-down Barbie that was missing clumps of hair. Barbie was too tall for the weeble sailors and there was no room for her on their boat. The weebles were lonely and missed their aquatic friend, rubber duckie. Aislinn will never have to go through the trauma of losing her rubber duckie forever.

On Friday I received a call from my OB/GYN's office. The nurse told me that they got my blood test results back and I am anemic and have gestational diabetes. They told me that I have to take, no joke, 325 mg. of iron every morning and every night. Seriously, I'm going to need some collace with that. I then had to make an appointment with an endocrinologist, I went today at noon. Dr. S (the endocrinologist), gave me a blood glucose monitoring system, a diet record, and a list of foods and their carb content. She was surprised that I haven't gained much weight, but I told her that I lost a lot of weight in the beginning when I was sick and now I'm eating healthier foods. This seemed acceptable to her, she actually said that it's good that I haven't gained too much weight because it makes things with this gestational diabetes a little better. She explained how to use the monitoring system, told me that I'd have to check my glucose level four times a day, and then we went over the diet. Keep in mind I'm already avoiding sodium and caffeine in order to help avoid preeclampsia. Now sugar and carbs are banned from my diet. She would like me to ONLY drink water, but a little bit of milk is fine. I have to count the milk as a carb with my meals. I only get 50 grams of carbs per meal and milk is 20 grams, so she suggested that I take an extra calcium supplement. If I'm dying for sugar I can use splenda. I need to write down everything that I eat on my diet record and record the number of carbs eaten. Two hours after I finish eating I need to check my blood glucose level and write that down on the sheet. Once a week I will fax my diet record to Dr. S and we will discuss my week. In four weeks I have another appointment with her. If my glucose level isn't staying below 120 and I am following the diet then I will need to start taking insulin. So far (and I've only checked it once) it's working.

While I was at Dr. S's office her nurse took my blood pressure. Every time I've been to my OB/GYN's office it has been 120/70 or extremely close to that. Today my blood pressure was 126/88, which didn't seem to cause any alarm yet, but for me that is high. Not high enough to be dangerous or for me to be admitted to the hospital for preeclampsia, but I hope that it doesn't become a trend. I'm not going to freak out yet, but I have an appointment with another doctor at my OB/GYN's office on Monday and I'll talk to her about it then.

29 Weeks Down, 11 Weeks To Go

2006-11-15T16:59:00.000-05:00

This week has been pretty uneventful compared to the drama of last week. Aislinn has been pretty active and spent a good 15 minutes last night thumping on my cervix. It was very uncomfortable but it has been one of her favorite things to do since about the 20th week. It's ok though, she only has 11 more weeks in there. My baby belly is getting pretty big. It's funny, there are some days that I could swear my belly has grown a great deal from one day to the next. I love it though. I love my baby belly, I love rubbing it, I love looking at it, and I love having her all to myself right now. I almost feel a little sad that in three months she's going to come out of there and I have to share her with everyone else. Plus, I kind of like how Howie kisses, talks to, and cuddles with my belly. It's too cute. Anyway, here's the most recent picture taken of my belly.

The count down to the baby shower has begun. Just three more days to go! I'm so excited! I was trying to pry some info out of my mother about the shower but she wouldn't say a word. That's pretty good for her, she usually has a really hard time keeping things to herself. My sister did let me know that they've worked pumpkins into the theme. I hope she also worked pumpkin pie into the dessert table. No matter what I'm sure it's going to be great. I can't wait to see all of my family and friends. Howie and I haven't had a chance to see anyone other than immediate family since we moved up here. We're still spending every free moment trying to get things in order around this house. We didn't get a chance to paint the baby's room this weekend. I don't think it's going to happen this weekend either. That's ok though. It's amazing to me how much stuff we still have. We got rid of so much before selling our house in VA. It just felt like we had so much more room in the last house even though it's the same amount. Our things just fit in so much better there. I think we need professional help. It's also a lot harder to get things done when I'm tired and sore. I also can't lift heavy things, when I get down on the floor I need help getting back up, and I don't have the balance that I used to have for climbing. Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be able to get everything finished around here. I did start to pack a few things in a bag for the hospital. Just when I run across something I think I'll need there I throw it into the bag.

I guess that's about it for now. I promise to update you on more interesting events this weekend.

Update

2006-11-10T14:09:00.000-05:00

Everything looks ok. There doesn't appear to be any reason for the bleeding. My placenta is intact and out of the way, my cervix is 4 cm thick and looks good, and the baby is kicking and healthy. They don't know why I was bleeding but it might have been due to some kind of cervical irritation. The good thing is that the bleeding has stopped, there is no sign of me going into early labor, and the baby was having a damn good time kicking around in there. I think that she just likes to have her picture taken. Perhaps she'll grow up to be a famous actress or something and buy her father and I the house of our dreams. It doesn't really matter, just as long as she grows up. I'm just happy that things look good.

Holy Shit!

2006-11-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Ok... I'm a little upset and I can't leave just yet so I'm writing. I'm bleeding. Red blood. Bleeding. Not gushing awful pouring blood, but bleeding red blood none the less. I called the doctor and she wants me to come in now but I'm waiting for our neighbor who has the car at his shop to bring the car to me so that I can go. Howie is coming home from work as we speak and we'll see what happens. She was kicking this morning, a lot, I think she's ok. I'm just feeling crazy right now and I'm probably not making sense at all because I'm upset. Sorry. To everyone who reads this who knows me in real life, I'm sorry that I'm not calling you right now but I just can't talk on the phone. I can't and I don't want to. I'm upset but I don't want to hear people tell me "it's ok, it's ok" or "OMG" or anything. I'm sorry if you're reading this and this is how you find out but I will call you later with an update.

Update
I went to the OB/GYN office and Dr. Hot Stuff decided to send me to the hospital for an ultrasound. They don't have an opening until 12:45 pm so I am back at home. She told me to stay off my feet, relax, and to drink lots of water. I've convinced myself that Little Nugget/Tiny Dancer/Thumper/Little Monster (pick a term of endearment) will be fine. Alright, that's a lie. I want to believe that she's fine but I don't know. Honestly this is one of my worst fears in the 7th month. In the 7th month of my mother's first pregnancy she was bleeding a little bit. She went to the hospital and the doctor told her that she was fine. He sent her home and put her on bed rest. It turns out that she had a very bad case of preeclampsia and should never have been sent home. It was Memorial Day weekend and my father's cousin and his wife (who they were living with at the time) were having a Memorial Day picnic. My father brought a plate of food upstairs for my mother and found her in a coma. The day before the picnic (which was the day after the doctor had sent her home) the baby had died. At the hospital they induced labor and delivered a still born baby girl. My mother was still in a coma. My father and their family and friends burried the baby. A few days later my mother woke up from her coma, still thinking that she was pregnant, and they told her what had happened. She looked down at her belly and completely fell apart. This has been a major fear and I almost mentioned it in yesterday's post but decided against it. Now here I am... bleeding.

I don't want to completely fall apart. She's still kicking, which is great. I know that she's still alive so even if things aren't ok she's still alive and although I'd prefer to keep her in there for the next three months IF they had to deliver her now she's still alive rather than dead. I am worried though because I know that her brain is now developing ridges and I have no idea what would happen if she was delivered now. Her lungs are still developing and... oh hell, nothing is done developing. I have 12 more weeks to go! How bad is it? I know that she could survive outside of my body right now but would SHE really be ok? What would the quality of her life be? Eventually I'd be sent home from the hospital and I'd have to leave her there.

The least important thing at this time is that I'd miss my baby shower which is next weekend. Whatever. Believe me I am really excited for my baby shower. I just want to have a normal pregnancy like normal pregnant women. I want to have a baby shower, I want to decorate the baby's room, I want to give birth naturally if I so choose. I celebrated with family and friends at my sister's shower after a failed IUI, I want to celebrate with them at MY baby shower. However, I'd prefer to actually have a real live healthy baby of my own, so if I don't have a baby shower I don't have a baby shower. It won't be the end of the world. I just want her to be ok, that's the most important thing.

Ok, it's almost time to go to the hospital. Keep your fingers crossed.

The 28th Week

2006-11-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

This is week 28 and I have been so tired. It's not that I don't sleep well at night because I am sleeping well. I'm just ALWAYS tired. I think I could sleep 18 hours a day if I let myself. I can't do that though. I do need to get up to work and eat. I haven't done much more than that though. I should probably just enjoy all the sleep while I can. In 12 weeks I'll wish that I had that much time to sleep.

I've been really emotional too. I thought I was emotional before, but it has been so much more intense lately. I could cry at the drop of a hat. I don't need a reason to just start crying uncontrollably, it just happens. I think I hit my peak around 3:00 pm each day. It's not the only time of the day that I'll cry, but I usually cry the hardest then. I feel a bit silly because I honestly know that there is no reason to cry but there's no stopping it. It does feel like a good to just let it all go though.

This weekend Howie is going to start painting the baby's room. Once he's done painting, maybe in a couple of weeks, I'm going to paint some little sheep jumping over fences on the wall. A couple of weeks after that we should receive the furniture. I can't wait to see it all put together. I can't wait to put the crib together, put her little clothes away, and set all of her books on her book shelf. I hope that it looks as cute as I imagine it looking in my head.

I guess that's it for now because baby girl is demanding her pre-dinner dinner and she always gets what she wants.

Welcome to the Third Trimester!

2006-11-01T15:45:00.000-05:00

Today I am beginning my 27th week and third trimester of pregnancy! Just 91 days left. That's just 13 short weeks or 3 months to go! YAY!! I can't believe that these past 27 weeks have gone by so quickly.

There isn't anything to exciting to report from my last doctor appointment. My belly is just the right size and I've finally reached my pre-pregnancy weight. I have one more appointment in four weeks and then I start to go to the doctor every two weeks. I'll have about four of those and then I'll be going in every week until the baby is born.

Howie and I have finished our birthing classes with the doula. We will meet with her again before the baby is born so that we can practice some more meditations for labor. In December we'll be taking the Tot Saver Program and the Newborn Care & Breastfeeding class at the hospital. We'll also get our tour of the child birth center at that time. We still need to set up a meeting with the pediatrician. We have a lot to do before she arrives. I made a list of things this past weekend. I'd like for all of those things to be completed a month before my due date. My grandmother, mother, and sister all had preeclampsia and had their babies early. My mom actually ended up in a coma and lost her baby in her seventh month. So, anyway, I'm doing my best to avoid preeclampsia. I hear that there isn't much you can do about it, if it's going to happen it's going to happen. However, I have cut out sodium, drink lots of water, get lots of rest, eating healthy and so far my blood pressure is great and I haven't experienced much swelling. Let's just keep our fingers crossed. Anyway, I want everything done by the end of December just in case she comes early. I really do hope that my doctor appointments continue to go well and that she stays in there as long as she can but comes out willingly without any medical intervention sometime around 40 weeks.

I truly do want my baby girl to wait another 13 weeks to arrive but I can't wait to see her. As much as I love her and can't wait for her birth Howie just might be more excited than I am. At least I get to carry her around and feel her growing and moving, he's just anxiously awaiting her arrival. It's very cute though. He kisses and talks to my belly before he leaves for work, when he gets home from work, while we sit on the couch, and before we go to sleep at night. Howie has been really sweet and is always telling me that my belly is beautiful and that I look beautiful. He's so cute. I can't wait to see his face in the delivery room when our baby girl is born. I can't wait to see him with her after we bring her home. He's going to be a really great father.

That's about all there is to say for now. Sorry that there isn't anything more exciting for me to update you on. Things are pretty uneventful right now, but I promise to keep you fully informed on my boring life.

What's New?

2006-10-18T17:04:00.000-04:00

Since I've sucked at blogging lately I have a lot of updating to do. So here we go!

I've been dead tired. No, not just a little bit tired! I'm talking Rip Van Winkle tired! Luckily I work at home. It's very easy to take a nap in the afternoon when I find it impossible to keep my eyes open. Every night I wake up to pee about three times on average. I also haven't been able to find a comfortable position to sleep in. I finally realized that I needed more pillows. I already have my Snoogle pregnancy pillow and the Boppy Cuddle pillow. I was sleeping without my Tempur-pedic pillow because my Snoogle wraps around my neck. I finally decided that I had to have my Tempur-pedic pillow ontop of the curl of the Snoogle pillow that should wrap around my neck. Because I have pelvic pain I needed an extra pillow between my legs because the Snoogle wasn't keeping my legs separated enough while I slept. I started using my Boppy between my legs in addition to the Snoogle. That left my belly unsupported. So I took one of the pillows from our guest room to help with that. I now sleep in a fortress of pillows and it's quite enjoyable. It's like sleeping on a cloud and I don't even feel the need to change positions in the middle of the night. The only problem that I have is getting out of the fortress of pillows when I have to pee. Now that I'm sleeping better I no longer feel as tired during the day. It's rather nice.

Last Tuesday I noticed that I could see the baby kicking on the outside. It was pretty cool. I'm still rather entertained by it and spend much of my day with my shirt tucked up under my bra staring at my belly. She's been kicking harder and moving around a lot more. It's starting to feel like actual limbs moving around inside of me. It's pretty cool and a little bit weird, but mostly cool. While I was brushing my teeth last night I felt some pressure on my right side. I pressed my hand up against my stomach and I could feel a hard spot. I think it was her little butt pushed up against my belly. I went over to the bed and put Howie's hand on it so that he could feel it too.

On October 2nd Howie and I went to the hospital for another ultrasound. I know, everyone is so over me having ultrasounds because the only other couple on the planet that had this many ultrasounds would be TomKat, but only because they actually OWNED their own ultrasound machine. Anyway, I guess my new doctor does an extra ultrasound for IVF patients. My last doctor also didn't keep a copy of the ultrasounds in my file. I knew that doctor sucked! Thank God I have a new one now. Anyway, she looked fine. She looks like Howie for sure. I'm not kidding, she has his profile. I had some extra time on my hands yesterday so I put a profile comparisson picture together as a joke. I'd show you the silly profile comparison photo but Blogger is sucking ass today and won't let me upload photos! DAMN YOU BLOGGER! DAMN YOU!! ::shakes fist::

This weekend Howie and I are going to be picking out baby furniture. It'll probably be delivered sometime in November, so we have a few weeks to finish cleaning out the boxes in the baby's room and then paint. Hopefully it'll all be done in time for my baby shower. That way I can bring everything home, wash it (if it's washable), and then put it away. I know, it seems a bit early, but that's just how I am. I'm like this with any long awaited event.

There is one thing that I keep obsessing over, it's the name that Howie and I chose for her. I love this name, I've loved this name since I was 18 years old and traveled to Ireland with my cousins. The name is Aislinn, and it doesn't sound the way that it looks. It's pronounced Ash-lynn. See, a couple of weeks ago Howie and I were at his parents house for dinner. Their friends were over and they were looking at our latest ultrasound when someone asked what we were going to name her. Howie said that we're going to name her Aislinn and that it's an Irish name so it's not spelled the way that it sounds. That's when Howie's parents' stupid friend, who we can call BFI for Big Fucking Idiot, asked how the name is spelled and I started to tell her, "A-I-S..." and she cut me off. "Wait! A-S-H." I said, "No. It's not spelled the way that it sounds, there's no S-H. It's A-I-S..." She cut me off AGAIN! "Wait! The name is Aislinn, right?" I took a deep breath, "Yes, but it's NOT spelled the way that it sounds. You can't spell it phonetically." "Ok, so spell it for me again." "A-I-S..." "A-S-H" "NO! You're trying to spell it phonetically! It's not spelled like that! It's A-I-S-L-I-N-N" She looked confused, "Say the name again and then spell it" I was so pissed off at this point so I said, "There's no point in me saying the name and then spelling it for you. I can spell it for you all day and it's not going to make any sense because it's not spelled the way that it sounds. The name is in Gaelic, it's another language so it's not spelled phonetically. It doesn't have an easy English spelling because it's Irish. AIS in Irish/Gaelic sounds like what ASH sounds like in English. So you can't expect the spelling to include an ASH because it doesn't. Her name is spelled A-I-S-L-I-N-N and it's pronounced Ash-lynn!" She probably thought I was a raging bitch, but how fucking thick do you have to be? I tried to cool things down by making a stupid joke that ended up just being lame. I said, "Maybe she'll hate me for giving her that name but she's going to grow into a teenager and tell me that she hates me anyway. (hahahaha) I might as well just go ahead and name her anything I want." BFI's response was, "Or she'll probably just legally change her name." WHAT THE FUCK???? Are you fucking serious? If I wasn't so damn polite I would have hauled off and punched that bitch in the face. So, before this conversation with BFI, who by the way is a teacher who I would think would have run into all kinds of different names including names that aren't spelled phonetically like SEAN which she probably would pronounces SEEN, I figured that our daughter might have to correct her teacher on the first day of school when she/he reads off her name during attendance or explain to her friends that her name is spelled A-I-S-L-I-N-N but I never imagined that she may end up having a conversation like I had with BFI. I figured that when she was little she may not appreciate her name the same way I do, but I thought that she might learn to love that her name was different when she grew up and could enjoy her individuality. It's a beautiful name, it means dream, and that's what she is to us. She's our dream. I could spell her name phonetically, but then it's the combination of the names Ashley and Lynn, it's no longer Irish (which is my background), and it no longer has the same meaning. It's simply a different name. The thing is, people learned how to pronounce Sinead when Sinead O'Connor started making music and people seem to get by when they see Sean instead of Shawn. Maybe Aislinn isn't as popular here as it is in Ireland, but I love the name. My only concern is that our baby girl will hate it and that I'm giving her a lot to deal with everytime she comes in contact with a BFI. I came across a thread on the internet about this name and a woman who liked it when it was pronounced incorrectly. She was wondering if it would be horribly ignorant of her to keep the spelling and just pronounce it Ayzlynn. Everyone with an Irish background or just the general respect for people of other cultures said no, that she should just come up with another spelling but not mispronounce an Irish name. You can't possibly say you like the name Aislinn if you don't like the correct pronunciation. What she likes is the way she thinks the name should sound, not the name. So she should change the spelling and just make up her own name so that she isn't a BFI. Then the ignorant morons in the thread would say stupid things like "We're a phonetic culture and nobody in the U.S. is actually going to pronounce it like the Irish do. Since you like the pronunciation Ayzlynn there's no need to change the spelling because in English the phonetic spelling would be Aislinn." Reeeeeally BFI #2, if Aislinn was the phonetic spelling then why were you using the spelling Ayzlynn to describe the sound of the name? CLEARLY she can create a whole new name that is spelled Ayzlynn and the meaning for the name would be My mother and her friends are BFIs. Sorry, the whole thing just pissed me off when I was reading it. It's not just my issue with this name or people screwing up Irish names, it's that people actually think that people of other cultures in this country should come here and either only choose nice little Anglo names or create new phonetic spellings for names that do not have an English origin. There are many different cutures in this country and I guess I put more faith in that, thinking that my daughter wouldn't be the only one with a name that wasn't spelled out phonetically and that knowing other kids with different names would make her feel less insecure about her name. However, there seem to be more BFIs out there than I orignally thought. Her middle name will be Madison. If she really doesn't feel comfortable with her name I suppose she could have people call her Madison. I hope that she doesn't, but I'll understand if she does. I would just not want her to go legally change her name the moment she turns 18 years old. My husband is Jewish and I'm converting to Judaism, so of course we will be raising our children as Jews. However, I am proud of my Irish background and it was important to me that she be proud of that part of herself and that I give her something (other than freckles and pale skin) from my background. Howie and I both love the name, so that's what I'm giving to her.

3 Year Anniversary

2006-10-12T13:36:00.000-04:00

Three years ago today I married Howie. I met Howie on July 3, 1997 in Washington, DC. He and my brother were roommates at the time. I had decided to take the train down with my brother's girlfriend to see him for the holiday weekend. My brother met us at the train station with Howie and I remember thinking that he was cute and that he'd probably just think of me as his roommate's annoying little sister. I was wrong, when we went out to the comedy club that evening Howie held my hand under the table and smiled at me. The comedian on stage quickly noticed and proceeded to make fun of us for the rest of the show. After that Howie and I split up from my brother and his girlfriend. We went to a dance club and that's where we first kissed. Sometime after midnight on the 4th of July he and I decided that we were officially a couple. I know it sounds like we were moving quickly, and maybe we were, but I had never met anyone so wonderful in my life. He was genuinely nice. An actual nice guy, I didn't know they existed. Oh, and he was cute, seriously cute. I loved the way he looked when we first met at the train station, still dressed in his shirt and tie from work and he had a really nice summer tan. Anyway, we dated long distance for about a month and then I broke up with him. We were 18 years old, we were young! I had seen my sister and a number of other people get too serious too early in life and it never seemed to turn out too well for them. I knew I loved Howie, I knew it that first weekend, but what if I was wrong? What if I was just a stupid teenager over romanticizing things? I didn't speak to him again until spring of 1998. He was happy to talk to me, but he had just met another girl at college and it looked like I had missed my chance. While he dated this girl for the next two years we remained friends and talked almost every day. I had always hoped that they would just break up so that I could have another chance with him, but I think it was around January of 2000 I had given up on that. He had just graduated from college a semester early, his girlfriend had another year and a half before she finished college but I just assumed that he was going to ask her to marry him sooner or later. I decided that I was happy for him because he really seemed to love her and all I wanted was for him to be happy. So when I had finally prepared myself to move on it happened! They broke up! I couldn't believe it when he told me. I felt bad for him because he really cared about her but I was also thrilled because he was single again. I didn't want to be too eager, he had dated her for two years and he needed time. Howie and I remained friends, chatted as we always had. A few months later my brother called me to say that the Navy was sending him overseas for a year and asked if I'd like to live in his apartment for free while he was gone. A free apartment in Arlington, VA only 10 minutes from Howie? Of course! I moved to Arlington in June of 2000 but by this time Howie was dating other women in the area. None of them were serious, but I didn't want to be one of the rebound girls. I started to date another guy in the area for a few months but by the time autumn rolled around that relationship was over and the long line of girls that Howie had been dating had finally come to an end. I think that we were together almost every spare moment we had. You'd think that taking things to the next level would have been easy at this point, but I think it was actually more difficult because we had become best friends. There was more on the line, neither of us wanted to risk the friendship. We finally got over that and began dating again on January 20, 2001. We had moved in together by May so that I would be out of my brother's apartment when he came home. At this point we knew this was it, we knew that we were going to get married some day. On the evening of March 8, 2002 Howie took me to the Lincoln Memorial and asked me to marry him on the top step. I of course said yes and we were married on October 12, 2003. So, yes, three years of marriage isn't that long but I fell in love with him nine years ago and I will love him for the rest of my life. He's the sweetest man I've ever known and I am thankful for him every day of my life. He is always there for me, he's always strong for me when I need him to be, he understands me, he knows me better than I know myself, he has faith in me, he makes me feel sexy even though I'm sure that I appeared to be much sexier when I was 18 years old, and most importantly he's my best friend. So, Howie, I love you! Happy 3rd Anniversary, baby!

Venting

2006-09-21T20:54:00.001-04:00

The other night at our birthing class our doula put out a bunch of cards with baby products on them. We had to divide these cards up into different categories. We had to find one item that would be absolutely necessary if the baby was born tomorrow, 5 items that we think we need, 8 items that would be nice to have, and something like 10 that were luxury items. We all put the car seat down as the one item that was absolutely necessary. As for all of the other categories, I have no idea what went into them now. I believe that crib sheets and a stroller ended up in the luxury item category. I stopped helping place things because I quickly realized that every time I thought there was something I'd need I was told that I don't. I learned that I'm a materialistic bitch because all you need when you have a baby is an endless supply of dish towels and an empty dresser drawer. I'm not fucking kidding! It's completely acceptable for you to put your child to sleep every night in your dresser drawer. I also learned that I don't need a nursing bra because I can continue using my regular bra and just pull it under my boob whenever I need to feed my baby. Yes, I realize that doing that works as well but I learned a long time ago that simply sleeping in my bra would stretch it out, but I guess pulling the entire thing under my boob won't? Yes, actually, it will! And when it does get stretched out I'll have to buy another bra, and when I do why can't I just go ahead and buy a nursing bra? Simply because my doula and the other couple in our birthing class think that I shouldn't? Please, I mean, I already saved money by NOT buying a crib! The doula also said that if you live close enough to the hospital you wouldn't need the car seat. She actually asked us how close we were to the hospital. I'm giving birth in JANUARY in CONNECTICUT! Even if I did live next door to the hospital I wouldn't be carrying my baby, that is only wrapped in a dish towel, home in my arms during a snow storm. That's probably because I'm materialistic and I just really want to waste my money on a travel system. Luckily I live far enough from the hospital that it seems acceptable for me to say that I'll need a car seat. Perhaps I could save the money and MacGyver-up some sort of car seat type thing made out of dish towels, a pot, and an old shoe. Nah, that's probably not necessary. Simply throwing my infant on the back seat and throwing the seat belt around it should be good enough. The other couple made a joke about their friends who just had a baby girl. They said that they laugh about how they have a whole nursery set up for the baby and all the baby has needed so far are diapers. Their friends sound like really horrible parents. I feel like I should call child services to let them know that these people have a fully loaded nursery for their child. I'm not sure how this little exercise has helped me prepare for my labor but I do know that it made me feel like a total asshole.

I guess this is where it begins. People say that once you become a mother other mothers begin judging you and compare you to themselves, as if they are better than you. It's not just the doula or the other couple in our birthing class, it seems to be everyone around me. It's my sister, my friends, my in-laws, people at work, pretty much any stranger that realizes I'm pregnant. One person says I need to register for this or that, another tells me that those things didn't work for them and that they know better than the last person you spoke to. When choosing something that I simply like it's laughable because no one would ever need this or that, I'm so materialistic. Maybe wanting the most beautiful crib in the world that will convert into a toddler bed and then into a twin size bed is silly, or the dresser that I want to buy instead of a changing table so that it will also grow with my child is unnecessary because there is a closet in the room, and maybe I shouldn't worry about buying my daughter that matching bookcase for her room so that we can place all of the children's books that I've registered for in there, I mean, Howie and I could just keep them in our bookcase right between Hannibal and An Affair to Remember. It's possible that a dish towel could be a burp cloth, a diaper, bedding, and a receiving blanket, but I'd prefer to have diapers as diapers, cute unnecessary burp clothes that say things like "Love Bug" or "Little Pumpkin" for my own entertainment while I'm up at all hours feeding, pretty sheets that fit nicely around my baby's mattress, and receiving blankets with adorable little animals printed on them. I realize it's for me, because my newborn won't care if she's crapping on my shirt or in a diaper, but I will. She won't care if I throw her clothes on the floor or in a pretty pink hamper, but it makes it easier for me to have all of her dirty clothes in the mesh bag that detaches from the hamper. It pisses me off that people feel the need to voice their opinions and laugh at me for the way I would like to decorate my baby's room or care for my daughter. Believe me, when I feel like I don't know what I'm doing I'll ask for help, but unless I've asked I'd really appreciate it if everyone would just keep your assvice to yourself. I am, after all, the one who tried for two years to conceive this child, I'm the one who stuck myself with numerous needles during every cycle for the past year (most of the time with Howie's help), I'm the one that had track marks on my right arm from having my vein tapped over and over and over again, I am the one that would endlessly vomit and feel that my world was spinning around me after popping my Metformin, I waited through a number of 2 week waits and cried when the results were negative, and after becoming pregnant I was the one that put up with the nausea, gave up caffeine, have stretch marks all over my growing belly, tolerating some intense acid reflux that no amount of Tums can resolve, back aches, removing the awful new, dark, ugly facial and body hair that is growing like a weed all over me, and I will eventually give birth without drugs (as long as there aren't any emergencies at the end) all without complaining because my little baby girl is worth every single bit of it but excuse me for being a little bit selfish now that I'm finally going to be a mother. I wasn't sure that I'd ever get to decorate a nursery or walk into Babies 'R' Us to register for all kinds of baby things. Now that I can you better believe that I'm going to have fun with it and if all those asshats that would rather put their kid in a drawer than a crib want me to say it, fine, I'll say it! YES, IT'S ALL FOR ME! I AM SELFISH AND MATERIALISTIC.

I'm sure that once my daughter is born the next issue will be that either I'm a bad mother for working or that I'm contributing to the set back of the feminist movement by being at home with my child. It should be the best of both worlds, working from home, but I'm sure it's still somehow the wrong thing for me to do. It would be difficult to go into the office when the office is in VA, and it would be difficult to pay for daycare because it is insanely expensive. Will I be teaching my daughter that women are lower than men because I'm working from home, I doubt that because I don't believe that and neither does my husband. Will my daughter be behind because she isn't in daycare and therefore not socializing with other children? I doubt it because I do plan on joining Mommy and Me groups so that the both of us can get out of the house now and then. What if I'm wrong? What if I'm damaging my child? I don't think that I'm such a fumbling moron that my child is going to end up in lock up by the age of 15 because I worked from home. Who the hell knows what to do anymore? The thing is none of us know what is exactly right, we're all doing the best that we can and trying to teach our children the values that we feel are the most important for them to learn. Why do we have to judge each other? Because we're so insecure about what we're doing and finding that someone else is doing something different makes us question ourselves, so instead we decide to just make the other woman feel like she's doing something wrong with her child. It's stupid, why are you so worried that you're wrong because they do things differently? It doesn't mean that you're wrong or that they're wrong, it just means that there are different types of people in this world which I hope isn't such a huge shocker for you. Just raise your child to be the kind of person you'd like them to be and if you don't like the way that I'm raising my child then I guess we just won't be putting our children into the same play group. Quite honestly, if you're upset with me for putting my child to sleep in a crib, covering her butt with a diaper, and breastfeeding her in public then I don't care to know you. What you should be more concerned about are the people who starve their children to death, or beat their children, or molest their children and their children's friends.

Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better now.

We're Having a Little...

2006-09-18T15:11:00.000-04:00

We're having a little baby girl!!! She is so cute and so perfect! You'd think that at this point I wouldn't be weepy anymore but I'm still weepy. We saw her little heart beating, but now we can see all four chambers pumping. We saw her two perfect little kidneys and then they measured her little legs, arms, nose, everything really. She had her left arm up next to her face and it looked like she was yawning. She is so beautiful. No matter how much she kicks and how often I see her little heart beating I'm still amazed that she's doing just fine and continues to grow inside of me. For some reason it seems so much more real to me today. I think I finally believe that I'm going to have a baby in almost four months. I was looking at her on the screen, watching her moving around, and I realized that the little person that I've been talking to and have been feeling move inside of me is right there on the screen. She's real and she's healthy. There really is a little piece of Howie and I growing inside of me and I finally feel connected to her. I am so in love with her. I don't think I've ever loved someone as much as I love her. She is the most perfect and wonderful thing that Howie and I have ever done. I can't wait for the moment that she comes into this world and I'm finally able to hold her and kiss her. I love you, my little baby girl.

Unpacking

2006-09-17T22:17:00.000-04:00

Howie and I (Howie really) have unpacked a lot of boxes this weekend. We've also put together a lot of new furniture from IKEA. Yes, cheap IKEA furniture all over our living room. Thank God for IKEA! We put together a TV bench, shelving unit, drawer unit, and desk. We bought the ALVE shelving unit because it comes in the Antique finish like our MARKOR TV bench and cabinet. Yes, MARKOR had a shelving unit that would go with the rest of our set to create an Entertainment Center but it was too wide for the space it's going in. So we bought the ALVE shelving unit because it was thinner. After putting the shelves together we realized that they are much taller than the MARKOR cabinet and even though it was thinner than the MARKOR shelving unit that we didn't buy it still covers the window frame. I guess that's better than having the MARKOR unit covering part of the actual window, but it still kind of bothers me.

While Howie and I were unpacking boxes we found a box marked "Living Room - Wood Bots". We were both confused. Howie was thinking "Gobots?" and I was thinking "Why would robots be made out of wood? Why would we buy something as lame as a collection of wooden robots? Why don't I ever remember seeing them in our home?" Howie opened the box and inside we find Howie's entire fleet of WOODEN BOATS! One of the sweet women that packed up our things before the move misspelled the word boat. Poor thing, that's what too many hours of packing can do to your brain.

Our dining room used to be completely filled with boxes. The fact that we can now see outside our sliding glass door is amazing! We found that we have way too many pictures, books, and DVDs. All the picture boxes have gone upstairs for now. Until we are completely unpacked I don't think I can even imagine where the pictures are going to be hung. We are still opening boxes of books and DVDs. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! Howie wanted to go buy more shelves that we'd put God knows where but I told him that I just want to be like everyone else with a perfect, clean, minimalist type home. I doubt we'll ever actually achieve that. We also need to make sure that there will be room for a Pack 'n Play and crawling room for the baby. If by some miracle we have any excess space we might get a sideboard so that we can actually store our china. Right now our china is sitting in the baby's room. It's very likely that our precious, delicate plates will be the baby's first toys.

My desk is pretty much set up and ready for me to begin working from home tomorrow. I still have another stash of work related items upstairs that need to go into my new desk, but there just isn't enough room. I barely had room for all my fun choking hazards. It's much more important to display my matryoshka (nesting dolls) from Georgia (the country), Mardi Gras cats from New Orleans, mini zen garden where my coqui frogs from Puerto Rico spend their days relaxing in the sand, my zebra bowl from Tanzania, fertility dolls (that so don't work) from Zimbabwe, wooden fish from I don't remember where, and my crazy wooden cat from Key West. Some I bought on my own, some were gifts, all of them are more important than a tape dispenser and other office supplies. The zebra bowl has form and function, it holds my binder and butterfly clips.

The Big E (huge New England fair type thing) was awesome. Howie and I went with my sister and brother-in-law. I ate everything, well, almost everything. I had 2 large cups of fresh lemonade, fried dough, chocolate covered banana (which I dropped all over my white tank top), apple crisp, apple cider, apple cider doughnut, loaded baked potato, some soda, pizza, some more soda, and then Howie bought me a caramel apple to bring home. I didn't eat everything I hoped to eat. I missed out on the huge caveman-like turkey leg, milk & cookies, maple candy, hot dog, fudge, and cotton candy. Even though I didn't eat everything I did pretty damn well considering my digestive system has slowed down and I normally become insanely full after eating an orange. Howie and I bought a few other items while we were at the Big E. We bought a stained glass Star of David to hang in our window so that the neighborhood is aware that a couple of Jews have moved in, a drug rug (catnip blanket) for our cat, and a little cuddly blanket with a lamb head on it for the baby. This morning I was sitting at my desk about 3 feet away from the chair that my cat, Kirby, was sleeping on. I started to open the bag that contained the drug rug, Kirby immediately awoke. He jumped off the chair and started to sniff the bag in my hands. I took the drug rug out and threw it down on the floor in front of me. He was on that blanket almost before it hit the floor. He licked it, bit it, scratched it, and rolled on it. He's in love. After a few moments his eyes were glazed over and he was all tripped out. I think he's pretty pleased with the gift.

So, tomorrow is the big day! In about 12 hours Howie and I will hopefully know if we're having a boy or a girl! I can't wait. I keep going back and forth in my head, "it's a boy" "no it's a girl" "no way, Howie's always right, it's a boy". I won't have to wonder much longer.

New Doctor, Doula, and New Home

2006-09-14T13:23:00.000-04:00

Howie and I went to our first appointment with my new OB/GYN on Monday. The staff at the new OB/GYNs office is a thousand times better than the staff at the old OB/GYNs office. The nurses are more friendly and talkative and the one doctor that I met so far was really nice. She's also REALLY attractive. The only thing about Dr. Hot Stuff that bothered Howie was the way she sounded when she spoke. I didn't notice anything, except that she sometimes over pronunciates like Ross on Friends.

Dr. Hot Stuff asked us if Dr. P (who's staff STILL hadn't sent my records to my new doctor)had done a screening for Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18 and Trisomy 13. I said that we hadn't and she told us that if we wanted to do that we had to do it immediately because it was almost too late. We decided to do it just so that we can prepare ourselves. Dr. Hot Stuff measured my belly and then we all listened to the heartbeat. It looks like everything is the way it should be. We have an ultrasound scheduled for Monday. We're looking forward to finding out if the baby is a boy or a girl.

Last night was our first birthing class with the doula. There's only one other couple that attends the class. I like that it's a small class. The doula, who we can call R until I can come up with a better name, asked us a bunch of questions. Howie knew more than me and the other couple. Somebody does a lot of reading. No, really, it's very cute that he knows so much. She also taught us about the stages of labor, we talked about our discomforts during our pregnancies, and she went over a few other things. At the end of the class she did a relaxation exercise. She said that every week she'll be doing one at the end of the class. We really liked the class and our doula. We went home with some homework. We had to look up some birthing plans online and come up with a rough birthing plan. The other thing is that if we like music she wanted us to go home and pick a song or a list of songs that help us relax. We then need to start to listen to the music while relaxing in bed, that way when I listen to it during labor it will remind me of being relaxed. Sounds good to me. I'm a huge music person so I'll really enjoy picking out some relaxing music.

The new house is good. It's nice to be back in CT. A few neighbors introduced themselves to us the first day we were here. Now, this may not seem unusual to many of you but for Howie and I it was. Before I go on I'd like to say that I love the DC Metro Area, it's a great place and I met many wonderful people. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have lived there for 6 years of my life. That being said, when Howie and I moved into our townhouse community in Springfield, VA in 2003 NO ONE introduced themselves to us. We'd say hi to people, wave, be nice when we spotted a neighbor, but nobody would show any interest in getting to know us. Nobody spoke to each other, unless they both had kids around the same age, then they'd talk when they had to. Maybe it was just our community, I'm not saying it's like that all over the area, but that was our experience. Anyway, our new neighbors are awesome. We got to the house a few days before the movers did. On the day that the movers arrived a couple of our neighbors stopped by to see if we needed anything, offered to help after the movers left, it was really nice. The couple that lives right next to us had us over to their house, gave us all their take out menus, their phone numbers just in case we needed something, the number of their plumber friend so that we can fix our plumbing problems, the husband drove Howie to the closest train station so that he could see where it is and then told Howie that he could park at the gas station that he owns only a few steps away from the train, and the wife printed up the train schedule because we didn't have our internet hooked up yet. I could go on and on about how kick ass our neighbors are but I think the only people who are truly excited about that are Howie and I. We still have a lot of boxes to unpack and it's making me crazy. When Howie and I have enough time alone we get a lot done. Howie is fast, and I'm always more productive when I have my iPod on, so this weekend we'll be unpacking like mad crazy! I can't wait to be completely unpacked so that we know where everything is and so that we can just relax.

Last bit of baby news, today is the first day that I could feel the baby kicking on the outside! I love it. I've been told that I won't enjoy all the kicking later, but for now it's pretty cool.

Saying Goodbye to My Office

2006-08-31T18:17:00.000-04:00

I'm still at the office right now. Yesterday should have been my last day, but it wasn't because I couldn't focus enough to actually finish everything I needed to finish. So I'm here and I was getting a lot done. I've got my iTunes on, I'm writing instructions for the new guy (who drives me crazy, but that's for another post) and then my boss, Debbie, comes in.

Debbie walks in and says, "Ok, I'm going home now." and walks over to my desk. NO! I don't want to say goodbye to anyone! Especially Debbie & Lesley. I get up to hug her, and I hate that I'm hugging her goodbye and I smell because the movers packed my deodorant. That'll be the last thing she remembers, Amy smelled bad. Anyway, she says that she's going to miss me, but that we're still going to talk and we're still working together it's just that we're not in the same location. I shake my head, and she gives me the same speech she gave at my going away party yesterday and during my annual review. She tells me that she's so proud of me because she remembers my first day here. I walked in the front doors without any experience and in the past 4 1/2 years I've gone from being the receptionist to being the Office Assistant to being a Program Coordinator for our second largest project and traveled all the way to Zimbabwe by myself to work with WHO and now I'm leaving as a part of the HR team. She said that she is so proud of my achievements, and I should be proud too. Seriously, I could never have done those things without her giving me a chance. I was 23 years old when I started working here, I had been working shitty retail and all I had was a high school diploma. She hired me and I worked my ass off, she promoted me to Office Assistant, and then it happened. See, after working as receptionist and as office staff everyone here gets to know you, and then they snatch you up if they like you enough. Well, we had recently won a new contract and the Project Manager wanted me to work as his Program Coordinator. Debbie called me to tell me the good news and although she didn't want to lose her assistant she knew that being a PC would be a great opportunity. I mean, a masters degree is one of the requirements for that job and I only had a high school diploma! It was a great experience, but I couldn't give them the kind of time that I needed to give to them when Howie and I started trying to have a baby, so I left. Debbie was now the HR Manager and hired me to be her assistant. She allowed me to work on a part-time basis so that I could take off whenever I needed to and not have to worry about sick leave. She's the best boss in the whole world. I really love her and I don't ever want to work for anyone else ever again because now I'm spoiled. Anyway, she started to cry again, as she has been all week, and I started to get teary. She said some other things but it's all a blur now. We hugged again and she left. I sat back down and looked around my office. I'm not coming back to this every morning. I'm going to miss my computer, tomorrow they're clearing it and giving to the new guy. He's going to have my computer, my ergonomic chair, my telephone extension (bye-bye ext. 5084), I won't have the balcony outside the HR office on the 11th floor, and I won't be entertained by the weird blonde across the way in the next building (bye-bye blonde woman). My desk is empty. I no longer have my big IKEA ZiZi plant on top of my file cabinet, or my silly family & friend pics on my book shelf next to my mini zen garden where I placed the little frogs that Les bought me in Puerto Rico, and my Russian dolls no longer sit on my other file cabinet with my fertility dolls from Zimbabwe. I still have them, but they aren't where they belong, in my office, where I belong from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM everyday. Now they'll be cute little choking hazards for my baby to play with at home. I haven't yet thrown out the empty tissue box on my desk. I'm also going to miss the chair in the reception area where I was sitting when I found out that I was pregnant. Worst of all I won't see the two wonderful ladies, Les & Sun, who were with me when I found out and cried along with me. Les, I'm also going to miss sitting in your guest chair chatting loudly to irritate the hell out of your jackass of an officemate. I'm going to miss those long talks about nothing in the middle of a boring day at work and then being caught by Debbie. All I know is that I miss every single inch of this office, even the dirt nasty Ladies Room.

*Side note to Lesley... I just realized that those Girl Scout cookies are still under my desk!!! CRAP! Umm... I'm leaving them there...*

Anyway, I hate that the asshat that will be picking up the few things I can't do from home is getting all of my stuff! I'm totally giving my ergonomic chair to my other co-worker, Chitra, because I swear that her chair is unsafe, and the little punk ass 22 year old that thinks he knows everything doesn't need excellent back support. That little punk told me 3 times in 1 hour that HE needed ME to clear everything off my desk tonight because they're moving him there tomorrow and he needs the space! He also implied that I'm dirty by asking in a half joking, half serious way if I would be providing him with rubber gloves and wipes! What the fuck!!! I should have tossed his bitchy ass right off of the fucking balcony. I'm so not dirty, I'm not just saying that, I'm seriously not dirty. When I was the receptionist I was grossed out by the nasty keyboard they had at the front desk. I actually took all the keys off of the keyboard so that I could clean each one, so fuck you, you little punk ass!

Ok, I don't want to end on that note. I have really enjoyed working here, even on the bad days, because the people here are really awesome and it breaks my heart to leave them. I have been crying in private every day because I'm so sad that I end up going into the ugly cry, and I wanted to spare everyone from a sight like that.

There has been one good moment today, but it's unrelated to me leaving my office. We got a call from our loan office today. Our loan has been completed!!!! Wooohooo!!!!!!!!! Only 24 hours before closing! I have to say, I really thought they'd fuck it up and I'd have to throw rotten fish at their building.

Another Way That My Infertility Can Screw Me Over

2006-08-23T11:18:00.000-04:00

As you know, Howie and I are moving to CT. Like I said before, we have a contract on a house in Southern CT and our closing is scheduled for September 1st. Well, our first issue was that I wouldn't be there for the signing because not only will I be here watching the movers move our stuff out of the apartment, but I am on pelvic rest and my doctor has instructed me not to travel without assistance. Plus, it would be just stupid to travel up to CT, waste money on a train ticket and then drive back down for our pets. Anyway, there was the whole issue of me giving Howie Power of Attorney. The notarized form really goes to our lawyer handling the sale, but the bank that's giving us the loan wanted the original. Instead of just having me get another POA notarized they wanted to fight with our lawyer over who should get the one that had already been done. Well, the stupid 22 year old girl that works at the loan office and writes emails in Barbie Bubble Gum Pink to clients and the bank thought, for some unknown reason, that we were buying the house in NJ. Since we are actually buying a house in CT they won't be needing that POA from us, so I was then able to send the POA to the lawyers after a week of doing nothing with it at all. Instead of the POA they needed me to get a letter from my OB/GYN explaining that I am on pelvic rest and I can't travel without assistance which is why I gave my husband POA and then I needed to write a letter saying the same fucking thing. Ms. Barbie-Bubble-Gum-Pink-Loan-Girl reminds me of Tiffany from Lovespring International on Lifetime.

Then we had the issue with the fact that we had to borrow some money from my parents and Howie's parents for the down payment of the home. We had to have gift letters signed, copies of the checks, bank statements. The fact that they wanted to look into my mother and my father-in-law's bank accounts just pissed them off to no end because both of them felt that their privacy was being invaded because they were helping their kids out. Things were calmed down when they realized that they didn't have to show off all of their personal bank transactions. During this time there was more evidence that Ms. Barbie-Bubble-Gum-Pink-Loan-Girl was not quite right when she wrote Howie an email telling him that she no longer needed him to get a gift letter signed by his father because she had talked on the phone with his dad early that day and he had already signed and sent the letter to her. It turns out that his dad had NEVER talked to this girl and had NEVER heard about any gift letter until Howie mentioned it to him.

Then they sent us a huge list of things they'd need from us. Like 2004 and 2005 W-2s, a shit load of pay stubs, supervisors name and number, 3 goats, 2 chickens and our first born child. Since I wouldn't agree to giving them our first born child (considering I was barely able to obtain one for myself) I counter offered with 4 goats, 3 cows, 2 chickens and my barely used ovaries. They agreed and we all moved on.

Then came the big issue. The fact that my pay stubs from this year weren't reflecting my current salary or matching what my last W-2 showed is a major problem. Well, yes, I understand how that can look sketchy, but I had to move to part-time so that I'd have more flexibility with my hours during my fertility treatments because I had already used up all of my time off. Then once I was pregnant and had trouble keeping food down, bleeding, whatever, I had the flexibility and stayed home when I needed to. Anyway, I'm doing better now and I'm able to work more hours, things are fine. I'm also going to be working from my home in CT and I won't have to use sick days because if I'm sick I can sit in my bed in my pajamas with my laptop. It's all good. That doesn't help anything right now though. The bank is having issues because I wasn't working full time due to my fertility treatments so now they're asking all kinds of questions. I had to have my boss write THREE letters about why I was out and that after I move I will be working full time again. Because of the time I had to take off for my fertility treatments the bank was considering re-doing our loan based on my part-time salary instead of the real salary that I will now be earning!!! WTF!!! Not only do I feel like shit that I had to bother my boss three times to write three different letters I feel like shit for being infertile and fucking up our loan. We only have 9 more days until closing and I'm worried that this stupid issue will never get cleared up. Never would I have imagined (though I should have) that my infertility has any baring on wether or not we are granted a loan. Oh, and why did my boss have to write THREE letters to the loan office and bank? Because Ms. Barbie-Bubble-Gum-Pink-Loan-Girl was not able to properly communicate with the underwriter about what EXACTLY they needed my boss to say. When she told my husband that they were going to need a 3rd revision I went off. I told my boss and she nearly lost her fucking mind because, well, she has REAL WORK TO DO!!! Her job is not to write letters about my infertility issues and current job status for this stupid girl at the loan office. I told Howie that this was it, she had one last chance to get it right. That she better call that underwriter and write down EXACTLY what he needed the letter to say and then WRITE the letter and then SEND it to me so that I could forward it to my boss who would then sign the letter for the VERY LAST TIME and then they were to NEVER bother her again. So, she wrote the letter and emailed it to us. It's signed and a PDF copy has been sent to them. Let's just hope this is the end of it!

My First Baby Shower!

2006-08-20T23:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Les threw me a baby shower with our Virginia friends, since I will be moving away in two weeks. It was really sweet of her. My mother and sister flew down Friday night so that they could attend. The baby shower was beautiful, the games were lots of fun, and the food was fabulous. It was at a really cute restaurant in Old Town Alexandria called Union Street Public House. Les had placed little rubber duckies at every setting around the table and five balloons were tied to my chair (one with a picture of a cute rubber ducky). Howie crashed the shower towards the end. He was right in time for dessert and opening gifts. I really enjoyed spending time with everyone, especially because I will be moving away at the beginning of next month. It breaks my heart to know that in a short time I will have to say goodbye to everyone.

My mom had ordered some maternity pajamas for me but they hadn’t arrived in time for the shower. She brought me a few small gifts, a Winnie the Pooh brush and comb set, an all-in-on bathing brush, and a tube of Balmex. My mom swears by it (Balmex) because when my sister was a baby she had a serious case of diaper rash. She tried everything, even the hardcore cream from the hospital, but Balmex was the only thing that worked. So, there you go.

My brother’s girlfriend, Jen, gave me the Fisher-Price Aquarium Bath Center (my sister recommended it, she has the same one and my niece loves it), Johnson’s bath time gift set, and a super soft white plush blanket. It’s so cuddly that if it was large enough I’d keep it for myself.

My boss and her husband bought me the Classic Pooh towel & washcloth set, 4 pack Gerber flannel burp clothes (2 with little paw prints and 2 with yellow and white stripes), 3 pack Gerber tagless zip front sleep ‘n play sleepers, a 4 pack Classic Pooh flannel receiving blankets, and a Classic Pooh fleece appliquéd blanket.

My friend, Lisa, made me a diaper cake. Yes, you can buy those online, but she actually made it. I like to pretend like I’m Martha Stewart sometimes, but Lisa wins. I could never construct a three tiered cake made out of baby items. Pfffft! I couldn’t make a three tiered cake out of real cake! Anyway, it was super cute. It has all sorts of things. There are Pampers Swaddlers diapers inside each tier, around those are blankets. Tied, pinned, or wedged in around the tiers are bottles stuffed with burp clothes, comb, brush, small Gerber Grins & Giggles body wash & lotion (lavender, oatmeal, and aloe), pacifiers, pacifier clip, rattles, little caterpillar toy, nail clippers, tweezers, teether, socks, onesies, and topped with a little plush lamb. So cute!

And Lesley, she gave me the shower and is knitting me the softest, cutest, yellow blanket, which I am also considering sharing with the baby. I love it! I showed it off all weekend, but I have to return it to her on Monday so that she can continue to knit. She apologized that it wasn’t finished yet, but that’s totally fine. I still have another 23 weeks to go, so there is plenty of time. I’m really thankful that Les is my friend. Not only is she an awesome knitter, she’s a wonderful, caring, giving friend. It breaks my heart to know that I won’t be seeing her every day. We were friends before we both began our journey along the dark path of infertility. I would never wish infertility on anyone, least of all Lesley, but if the two of us have to go through this I’m glad that we had each other. I’m going to miss our trips to Starbucks every day, wasting time chatting in the office when we should be working, going out to eat, wasting money we don’t have on spa treatments, and our occasional snark-fests. Thank you for the wonderful baby shower, Lesley.

Remember Me?

2006-08-15T23:45:00.000-04:00

I’ve truly sucked at posting lately considering I haven’t posted at all. A lot has been going on and when there was nothing going on I was sleeping. I’m ALWAYS tired these days. The only time that I’m semi-functional is at work, so that’s where I’ve been trying to blog. Unfortunately something always comes up because, well, I’m at work. That seems to take over because I’m trying to do my best to please my boss so that when I move she’ll still gives me plenty of work to do rather than giving all of my work away to someone in the office. The whole working from home thing and still having the kick ass insurance and benefits that my company provides is a rather sweet deal. Only the golden children get to move away and keep their jobs, so I don’t want to get on anyone’s bad side.

Anyway, what’s new? Where do I start?

P News

Last Tuesday at 4:30 pm I felt the baby kick for the first time. I know… I thought it was a bit early to feel it too, but it was the baby. It felt like little flutters and twitches. I shrugged it off at first, then it happened again and I paid more attention to it. It was strange to feel the baby moving inside of me. It was strange but wonderful. It’s all starting to seem more real, but I think that I’m still mostly in denial.

I’m a bit chubby, so the baby bump isn’t really showing… if there is one. Well, I could say that up until last week. I couldn’t actually see a change in my belly or even breast size, but my clothes started to look really stupid on me. I’m not worried about getting large and having a big belly. I’m actually looking forward to that because, like I said, I’m already a bit chubby so at least this round belly has something better in it than fat. My pants were starting to get kind of tight and hugged my lower fat roll/possible baby bump and my shirts were looking shorter which only showed off that lower fat roll/possible baby bump some more. This is the awkward stage that I don’t like. I’d like it if I went straight from being chubby to being hugely pregnant and just skip over that weird awkward stage where I look like I’ve been eating too many bags of potato chips and candy out of the vending machine at work. This week it’s about the same, I look silly, but I’m kind of able to see that it’s not just fat that I’m carrying around. I can see that I’m getting bigger, but it’s only clear to me when I’m naked. Others will still just think I’m pigging out on junk food.

I have, however, lost 16 lbs. total making pregnancy the best diet I’ve ever been on. I read an article about how it’s not ok to lose weight even if you are overweight when you get pregnant and then begin eating better, like I did. I’m still not giving the baby enough calories and that means that the baby is living off of my stored fat which means that the baby isn’t getting enough glucose and that is apparently really bad. So, I panicked and made my husband bring me shopping when he came back to VA for the weekend. I spent $350 on an ass load of fruits, veggies and other wonderful healthy things. I planned out meals and forced myself to eat more and drink at least one 8 oz. bottle of water every hour and a half at work. I ended up spending most of my day eating, drinking, and peeing. This was extremely disruptive and I really felt beyond full all of the time. Yes, I’d do anything for my baby so I sucked it up. Honestly though, I get full REALLY fast now that I’m pregnant. I want to vomit from eating so much, and that would just make all these eating pointless. So I’ve taken it down a notch. I’m eating more than I used to, but not eating as much as I as when I was obsessed about how many calories I was taking in. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they lost weight during their pregnancy and worried about it too, but in the end everything turned out to be fine. I can’t spend my entire day eating, drinking, and peeing. I have to work, I have to go out and do things, I have stuff to do in general and those things are impossible when you pee literally every 5 minutes or less, or when you are eating every 2 hours, or when you are drinking water every moment of every day. I am not starving and I doubt the baby is either. I just want to relax because it’s something that I haven’t been able to do since I found out that I was pregnant.

I’m extremely efficient and am perhaps too eager to plan pretty much everything that comes my way. I should really be a wedding consultant but I don’t want to work on the weekends. I’ve hired a birthing doula and will be starting birthing classes on September 6^th. It’s a bit early, but the next session would run past my due date and what good would that do me? I feel a bit silly that everyone else will be clearly pregnant and I’m going to walk in looking like I eat too much at buffets. I’m considering stuffing my shirt with a throw pillow before heading out to class but it would be pretty embarrassing if it didn’t stay put and I gave birth to a pillow. Kind of like middle school girls stuffing their bras with tissue and someone seeing it in the locker room. It’s just uncool. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to try to have the baby naturally and to have someone there that can help me with that, which is why I’ve hired a doula. I honestly don’t feel strongly one way or another about drugs vs. natural labor. I think that every woman should do what she is most comfortable with. I’m looking at it like my little adventure weekend trip in the wilderness that I went on in 7^th grade. One of my teachers talked me into going. There wasn’t anyone else on the trip that I really hung out with, most of them were older. I didn’t have a lot of confidence at the time and I think that my teacher was hoping this trip would help. Anyway, I am afraid of heights, large bugs, and I used to be really shy. During the trip I had to climb rocks, walk across a really high rope tied to two trees and sleep on the bare ground (LARGE BUGS CRAWL ON THE BARE GROUND!!!) with a bunch of people I’ve never socialized with before. All of those people cheered me on when I was climbing the rocks and walking on that rope and I got through it. Not only did I get through it but I was really proud of myself at the end of it all. I thought that with the doula and my husband there to help me and cheer me on that I could get through labor without the drugs and when, not if, I do I’ll be really proud of myself for being so strong. Of course if I opt for drugs I’ll be able to get some rest during the labor or maybe even play some scrabble. I’ll bring my doula and scrabble so that I’m ready for either scenario.

I think that’s it for P News. Let’s move on…

House Hunting/Moving News

We found a house, we have signed a contract on that house, and our closing date is scheduled for September 1^st. YAY!!! I will officially be leaving the DC metro area on September 2^nd and moving up to CT with all of my pets. The best part is that I will be able to see my husband all the time rather than just weekends. I’ve only seen pictures of the house, I haven’t actually been there yet. My husband and my in-laws have been to the house and they all say it’s great. I trust them and the pictures look fine. Right now a bird’s nest would be fine as long as I can live with my husband again.

Bad News

My friend, Les, needs some love. She’s going through a hard time, to say the least. My heart is just breaking for her. ::hugs & kisses:: to you, Les.

No News, Just Thanks

I wanted to say thank you for all of your comments on my last blog and all of your support. It was a bad day and I was pretty upset. I’m really glad that there hasn’t been any pregnancy drama since then and hopefully there won’t be anymore in the future.