Drain on the main brain...a parent complains.

        * WARNING* If you can't handle hearing a parent complain, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU* (you totally rock if you hear Eddie Vedder in your head when you read THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!) I have about four or five different posts in the queue that I would like to write. But writing a thought provoking post requires actual THOUGHT...and I've got nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. I've had lots of thoughts on various issues, I thought about responses to the questions I was tagged with, but they flew out of my head somewhere. I've had lots of thoughts on PAIL vrs the ALI community, and when I've had a minute to read other people's blogs and comment I've done so. I had a blog post for PAIL about breastfeeding just about written in my head, but I think I've missed the deadline now. I'm not sure...but my thoughts are gone anyway. 

The truth is that I have a small window in the evening when I normally write. It was from around 6 or so until 7:30 ish most weekdays.  My husband has been coming home from work, bathing the kids and making them dinner. I usually do homework with the boys and clean the bathtub before quietly retreating the relatively peaceful quiet of our bedroom. But for some unknown reason, this time has started to shrink and decay. Yesterday my DH didn't make it home from work until almost 7. When I finally got upstairs, my brain was too fried and I ended up knitting instead for about 15 minutes. Not only has the amount of time shrunk, but the quality of the time as well. More often than not, my husband has had at least one kid 'slip under the radar' and end up in our bed keeping me company.Don't get me wrong, more often than not it is a nice time to connect with the boys, but sometimes I just need my space. It happened tonight, but when NB started to pester me about what I was writing I kindly brought him downstairs and put on Thomas. I'm going to have to find some other time, or some other place, to blog if I'm ever going to write anything interesting again.

The truth is, I feel burnt out. The boredom of the daily routine is grinding me down. The weariness of being repeatedly sad is grinding me down. These past couple of weeks I have been having a hard time hearing my inner voice. This is the part about parenting that really sucks. Being a parent doesn't suck, and the kids never do. It's all the brain/time/soul sucking stuff around it that does. It is the same brain/time/soul sucking stuff that kills you when you're not a parent...but you can't put it off because it's not for you. When we didn't have kids, I didn't cook, because my husband likes to. I didn't have to step into a grocery store. If my husband didn't feel like shopping or cooking, we just went out to eat. I would eat peanut butter and sandwiches every day if there was nothing in the house. Now I'm always cooking and grocery shopping...and I can't put into words how much I hate it. But...the kids need to eat well. My boys also can't aim worth a damn. Seriously. I have to clean both toilets almost every single day. That's ok...I write a lot of blog posts in my head while cleaning toilets. It's just that by the time I get to sit down and actually write.? Well....you've all seen the result. To make a crappy post short, my brain needs a vacation. It isn't that I can't make the time, it's just that I don't have the mental space.

On the ttc front, for anyone that's still following along: I had to go back to the lab on Monday because I hadn't ovulated on Friday. I was told Monday afternoon that I had ovulated too recently to start the Lupron yet, but I have been scheduled to start it on Saturday. Just the first hiccup in this cycle, and probably not the last.

Quicky *updated*

AAArg I never have time to post anymore. Things have been up, and things have been down. Today has been pretty 'up'.

I drove in to the city today in a snowstorm to go to the clinic. I was actually 15 minutes early, for once, but that is only because I gave myself 2 hrs to get there. I had a sonohystogram, or saline ultrasound, to check my uterus. Everything looks great. It looks like I may have some small fibroids in my uterine wall, but nothing that would hurt an IVF cycle. My ovaries look good, and they can tell that my right one will be the one producing an egg this month. On March 9th I go in for a blood test to see if I've ovulated. If I have, I'll be starting the Lupron. The meds have already been ordered, and will be arriving on the 6th. It looks like we're a go!

My RE seems to thing that the reason the bean didn't make it was genetic. I totally agree, since all my hormone levels were very good, and that even early on the fetus seemed to have an odd shape to it. We talked for a long time about what my protocol would be (the same, since I got pregnant, and had a good amount of eggs that fertilized) and how many embryos we would transfer. On this point, I'm stuck. For women in my age range, the suggest transferring 5. (5?!) I told him that since my last cycle produced 3 good ones, and two that were put in culture but didn't make it to freeze, that maybe I should have transferred all 5? At the end of our talk we agreed to look at the quality. What optimism, heh? :)  *update* My doctor's opinion on this is that the best that could have happened is that I would have gotten pregnant with twins and one would have survived. Well YEAH. That would have been cool. Still being pregnant right now and not having to do this again, even if I still lost one, would be better than the alternative.

*updated*  I won't be looking at transferring 5 this upcoming cycle. My thought was that if the embryos don't look good enough to transfer, and aren't good enough to make it out of culture, I would rather transfer them and give them their best chance. So...it's more of a quality thing. All 3 of the embryos I transferred last time looked good enough, although not perfect 8 cell beauties. We don't have another cycle after this, and I don't want the dilemma I've had in the past with what to do with frozen embryos...so I will probably put back more than 3 if there is a straggler or two. BUT if there are more good ones than that to freeze, I will freeze them. I think it's crazy at my age to be thinking I could possibly have that many good embryos. HA.

I'm standing in the starting gate, and itching to run.

Wordless Wednesday

in mourning 

a scrap of mourning fabric that my great-great grandmother pressed between the pages of her Bible

purchased in 1880  upon the death of her daughter, Catherine Louisa, at the age of 4

For Mo

and everyone else I know who has lost a child, of any age

and for those who are still trying, and mourn every cycle

Do you believe?

• Fridays still suck. I would have been 18 weeks last Friday. I have now officially been not pregnant as long as I was pregnant. 
• No progress has been made on my dining room. We need to purchase wall paper and to see if the paint color I have chosen will actually work. The ceiling needs to be put in primer. Since my husband agreed to prime/paint the ceiling because my mother is very short, and I can't purchase wallpaper without an infusion of cash, it is completely out of my hands at the moment. This bums me out. I think I will pick up the roller extension and or brush and paint something tonight. I can't paint while the kids are home and awake, which is why my mother is doing the painting. 
• Pablo decided to clean the pool early this month. No doubt he is being spiteful because I kicked him out from October until January. He should probably be cleaning someone ELSE'S pool right now. Jerk. 
• I am knitting baby hats. I hope to have both of them done by the end of this week. If they don't suck and I take them apart, grumbling under my breath all the while, and have to start over. I blame Downton Abby. I usually knit during football, because I can follow a game with less than half my attention. DA is far too engrossing. I am not the best knitter in the world, so I have to give more attention to my knitting than really good knitters do. 
• There have been some BFNs out there that have really made me sad. Sad because I really want everyone's cycle to work...even though I know it's not statistically possible. And sad because it reminds me how low my chances really are of getting, and staying, pregnant are at my age. It drives me crazy that I'm upset about a cycle failing that hasn't even gotten the chance to get underway yet. I have always taken IF one step at a time so I'm not wallowing in it. I know it is because in my heart of hearts I feel like I should be pregnant right now and should never have to do this again. Instead of focusing on all the great BFPs and growing bellies out there, it's only the negatives I see. That's just not ME and it's never BEEN me. 
• I have been able to knit baby hats, (which involves measuring baby doll Xs head for accuracy and using a baby hat one of my boys was given in the hospital as a model) play dolls with my daughter, and even walk around Target all without feeling miserable and sorry for myself. There are still times where I'm still sad, but I haven't cried in at least a couple of weeks. That feels great! Like I'm getting over the worst of the 'grief flu'. 
• I got a wonderful fortune cookie when we got Chinese take out this weekend. "Do you believe? Endurance and persistence will be rewarded." :)

Valentine's shmalentines *updated*

I am busy busy busy. I've been tagged, but I haven't had time to sit down and write a response. It's Valentine's day today, but I haven't bought a so much as a card for my hubby, although I snuck cards into the boys' lunch boxes this morning. All weekend the kids were sick, and yesterday I was sick, so I spent all day in bed sleeping. I'm not joking, I didn't wake up until 12:30. I'm still not feeling 100%. I remembered that the boys had to have valentines for all the kids in their classes as of 2 pm yesterday, and since I haven't been farther than 15 feet or so from a bathroom in two days, I had to send my husband out on an emergency valentine run. I was up until 11:30 last night addressing them...with two mad dashes to the toilet.

My clinic called me sometime yesterday afternoon. I was in bed at the time, and my husband came in with the phone and tossed it at me while literally snarling that it was my doctor before storming out of the room. When I went to answer it the line was dead, so I got out of bed and went after him. Once again my husband was angry, even though he promised that it was ok to move forward and that he wasn't going to be a prick about it. Once again I'm left with not knowing if I'm supposed to move forward or if I'm just supposed to dangle in the breeze with my pants down. I am so fed up, I can't even tell you. And tomorrow is cycle day 21 for me, so it is possible that the clinic was calling me to tell me to get blood drawn tomorrow so I can start Lupron, which would mean scrabbling to buy it today so it can be shipped. Of course I called them back yesterday, but it was already late in the afternoon so all I could do was leave a message. I'm hoping they get back to me early today so I know what's up. But before they do I have to call hubby at work and confirm that it is indeed ok for me to move forward. GAH! He drives me crazy. I don't need flowers or roses, I just need some consistency from this dude.

Anyway, I apologize if I haven't been keeping up with everyone's posts and whatnot. I'll be back on top of things.....sometime.

*UPDATE*  I called my tricky hubby to see if I had the go ahead or not. I emphasized the fact that I didn't want to do this without him on board 100%, and that this was the last time I wanted to hear any objections, and he told me to "go ahead and call the clinic". So I did. They called me back promptly, I'm pleased to say. My doctor knows that Pablo is due back from Boca..(or wherever he is off spoiling someone's day)...next week, and when he arrives I am to call them to schedule a saline ultrasound strait away to be sure that all the *products of conception* have been properly removed.  So...still on target for an April cycle most likely. YEAH!

Let's get the show on the road!

I called my clinic on Friday to tell them the bad news that my pregnancy didn't stick, and that I would be using my last cycle. As usual, I gave the message to the IVF nurse's line, since it wasn't about an appointment or an emergency. (the nurses always answer questions that day if made before 4, even if it is just to call you back and reassure you, they are great that way). When my nurse called me back (patients have a team assigned them, so I always have the same nurse) she felt so bad for me I almost started to cry. She said to me "I feel terrible because I know how much you wanted this." My doctor is out for 2 weeks so she couldn't tell me about my protocol, but they will be getting back to me as soon as he returns.

I can't wait. I know it sounds crazy to WANT to shoot yourself up with hormones, but I do. I really, really do. I know that right now, April will be the soonest I can cycle. (unless my doc gets back, sees me RIGHT away and puts me on the Lupron immediately. It could happen, but I'm betting not. The clinic checks to see if I've ovulated on day 21 of the cycle, and then starts the Lup that night if I have. Day 21 would be Feb 15 for me). The crazy thing is that if I get knocked up in April, I'll be due in December. The absolute latest I can cycle and still have a baby in 2012. I don't know why, but for some reason that feels important to me. Maybe because that is when the world is going to end??? ;)

Maybe it is just important so that I can move on with my life. Of course, I am moving on with my life. I'm still doing the things I planned to do, but not knowing for certain if I can ditch all the baby stuff and use the back bedroom for something else kind of throws a monkey wrench in at least part of my '2012 moving forward' scheme. And of course, not being able to get this cycle over with is a wall between me and processing my grief. I know that if/when I get that BFN (if the cycle gets far enough to get a BFN) the sh*t is really going to hit the fan. But that's ok....because it will all be done and gone and I can finally put way the the ttc portion of my life away for good. I am ready to be DONE. I want another child more than anything. But no matter what happens, I will be done.

But I've got one more cycle in me first. C'mon...bring on that big box of meds. I'm ready. Give me what you got!!! Because if I'm going down, I'm going down fighting. :)

running to stand still

Today is another Friday. That means I would have been 15 weeks today...at least I'm pretty sure. Out of the first trimester anyway. Probably starting to get a little bump, too, if past experience is any indicator. I would be looking forward to movement...and it would be the size of a cumquat or something.

Last year I was dreading Valentines Day. My husband and I were going out to a romantic local restaurant that serves a fixed menu of delicious gourmet food made only with local ingredients. I was dreading it, because I had been working up my nerve to ask my husband about using our remaining frozen embryos. I didn't do it. We were having a wonderful time, and I knew he would probably get angry at me just for asking. So I wasted another month...and another.

This year I'm dreading Valentine's Day. I don't want to be reminded that I'm basically at the same exact place I was last year...wanting a baby and not being able to move forward. Except that now my children are another year older, and my daughter is convinced that she wants a little brother or sister more than ever. Plus, I'm not exactly feeling romantic towards my husband these days.

It's another Friday. I've got no belly pics to show, no scan results, no follicle counts, no fertilization reports. But I'm making progress...really I am. I don't have ultrasound pictures to share, but I do have something.




Behold, my entry way. You will notice that I have hooks for jackets, and I have a system for paper...I'm not buried in junk mail and mittens!

And look...I've got wallpaper. Sort of.



And I bought a couple of flowers to take care of and brighten my day:



All of it great progress. I'm moving forward. But then there is this:The back bedroom. Sometimes known as "where dreams go to die" when I'm in a very bad mood. My future studio or a great guest room when I'm feeling better. And the future nursery, when I'm feeling hopeful.

And then there's this: My daughter and her twin brother and sister. A boy and a girl she tells me. And no, she is NOT the mommy, I am. Do you want to know why it isn't always better to have children to hold when you've had a miscarriage? This is it...in a nutshell.