Monday, December 17, 2012

Good chaos

I have started a million posts and not finished one. I am not really sure why. I am thinking that months of sleep deprivation will do that to a person. I will take my sleep deprivation though. After the events of Friday in Connecticut, I hold my babies even closer (if that is possible). My son was having one of his tantrums yesterday and normally I would get agitated, but I felt guilty for feeling any agitation because I knew that there were many people going to bed without their child who would gladly have taken a tantrum every hour to hold their child again. So unbelievably horrifying. On a lighter note, I just felt like checking in to document where life is at. We moved into our new home and love it! I am sadly trying not to become too attached in case my husband would lose his job in the coming months due to another airline merger. Trying not to think too much about it right now. Will deal with it if/when it happpens. Kids are doing well. Big boy is a hoot! He is a unique little guy with such a big personality. He is starting to really talk a lot. I swear it is because we started him on fish oil. He is regularly using 2-word combiations. As a speech-language pathologist, it is amazing to watch language develop. We have been talking a lot to Big Boy about Santa's upcoming visit. He is fascinated by this chimney thing and listens very carefully. So, tonight at dinner we asked him what he would lieave for Santa when he comes. He thought for a few seconds and then said, "Cookie." We then asked him what he would leave for Santa to drink. Without missing a beat, he responded, "Beer." We were skyping with my parents and they about fell out of their chairs! He does such cute things all the time. It usually makes up for his crying spells... Little girl is doing well, but is doing things a little more slowly than Big boy did. We tried feedig her oatmeal tonight and she wasn't really interested. I think it was partly due to teething, partly due to reflux and possibly related to the surgery she had on her tongue and lip at 4 weeks old :( She also isn't rolling over. She did it at 3 months, but has't done it since. She is also fairly quiet, whereas her big bro was a chatterbox. Amazing to me how different they are. She is very sweet and makes much more eye contact than her brother ever has. She has the bluest eyes, which is strange since mine are brown. Blue eyes are all over the place on my side of the family so maybe that is it. Oh, and she snores like a chainsaw!! The ENT said that it is due to her acid reflux and that she should grow out of it. I sure hope so otherwise she will never get married! Not much else new here. Hoping to get some rest over the holidays. We haven't gone out at all because our regular sitter broke her back in a car accident. Poor girl :( I hope that those of you still struggling with infertility have some peace over the holidays and that the new year brings you everythiing you wish for. I will check in sooner next time for anyone who reads this blog.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

She is here!!

In case anyone still comes across ths blog, I don't want to leave you hanging! I survived my pregnancy and our little girl arrived on July 5th at 2:15pm via scheduled c-section. She is beautiful:) She was 8lbs, 20 1/4 inches long. We are soooo in love!

She ended up with a giant birthmark on her back which will need to be removed due to the high risk of melanoma. She will need to have skin expanders for a few months prior to the surgery, which will not be fun. She already had to have laser surgery to fix her upper and lower lip tie, which was impacting breastfeeding. Not many doctors acknowledge that this can affect nursing and a baby's latch. Wish I had know this before when I tried (and failed) to breastfeed my son. We found a dentist in California who does laser surgery on infants so we packed up and left on a little adventure. It was tough to see my little girl held down to have the surgery (she was awake, but they numbed her up), but the dentist said it was one of the most severe he had seen and that the space between her teeth would have been very large if we had waited. She still would have needed surgery if we had waited, only it would have to be done under general anesthesia. We really wanted to avoid that and in the end, we are very happy we made the decision to do it. Two different doctors we have been to lately also agreed that we made the right decision.

Poor thing also has terrible reflux and is now on Zantac, which was a miracle drug for her. She has also had specks of blood in her stool, so it looks like it is either an allergy to something specific that I am eating or she has an allergy to my milk protein. The latter would be sad for me since this time I actually have a good milk supply and haven't had to use formula (even though there is nothing wrong with using formula). The specialist we saw said that I would not be killing her with my milk and that I could continue to breastfeed, but that if her symptoms became worse or she was not growing she would recommend switching to formula. She said that if she seems happy and is growing well that I could continue doing what I am doing. I am still trying to cut out foods that she may be sensitive to, but I haven't seen huge changes yet. I will take it week by week at this point.

Not gonna lie, it has been very difficult to have two children under the age of 18 months. It is hectic, but I would still take this over infertility. My worst day of parenthood thus far has been better than my best day of infertility. Infertility is just plain difficult. Parenthood is difficult, too, but not in the way infertility is. Infertility does not give you the reward of a smile at the end of the day. Infertility doesn't do anything cute. You can't dress infertility up to be pretty. You really can't cuddle infertility.

I do have to say that infertility gave me some very close new friendships and while it ruined others it strenghthened some of the friendships I already had. It also made me a stronger person and taught me to seize the moment. We never put off trips for infertility, but this is mainly because of our connection to the airline industry. I understand that the majority of infertiles have no choice but to put off treatment and trips for financial reasons. We were just very fortunate to be able to travel so much. It was all I had at the time and I clung to my travels. So glad I did because I was right all along in saying that it is not the same traveling with kids.

So, now I am just rambling. My point is that I hope those who are still struggling with infertility can reach their dream of having a family one day, no matter what that look like and that somewhere in my ramblings there is information that is useful to even one person.

I will try to update as I go, but I know that it is often tough to read blogs about parenthood while you are struggling. Please feel free to contact me by leaving a comment and I will be in contact (I know, I know, there have never been any comments left for me in all of my years of blogging, but you could always be the first!).

Best of luck on your journey. Don't give up if you have even the smallest shred of hope left in your heart...

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Updates

**I can't figure out how to get the new format to show my paragraph separation, so this post may be annoying to read (other than just the poor writing!) because it is like a giant run-on paragraph**I had intended to document some of this pregnancy, but just haven't had the time. Or maybe it is that I am still a little nervous- certainly not in nearly the same way as last time, but still nervous about getting lucky twice in a row. It really just isn't my style. I guess not all is going perfectly or I would be more nervous. My husband will likely be furloughed (laid off in airlline terms) if another merger goes through. That would be very bad as I would then have to go back to work full time and miss watching my children grow up. They do grow up so fast and after going through what I did to have them, I don't want to miss a second. It is time I will never get back. I guess if I have to go back to work, I will be able to look at it as just plain being lucky to have them at all even if I only see them for a few hours a day. So, I am still pregnant and will be 30 weeks along on Friday. It has gone so much faster this time than the last, probably because I am so insanely busy at work even though I am only working 3 days per week. Sometimes it feels like more just because I am a single mom for most of the week since my husband is gone for 4 days at a time these days. I am not supposed to lift anything because I still have placenta previa, but that is obviously impossible when we have no family here to help and I am alone so much. I have been contracting a lot in the afternoon on the days I work, so it is then hard to come home and try to take care of my son. I also just found out I failed my glucose test and have to go back on Friday (my 40th birthday!) for a 3-hour glucose test. I hope I pass it because my diet is already very limited by the gluten/dairy free thing. Plus, I love candy. So far, the baby has looked good in the ultrasounds and is a mover. She is starting to accumulate a small wardrobe, but we still don't know where we will put her. Our dilemma is that we have 3 wonderful kitties, but one is mean to the one of the others so one has to be kept in her own room (a.k.a. the new baby's nursery). She has been urinating on the carpet pretty much any time the newest one (the one we call our "IVF baby" because we got him during the 2ww of our 2nd failed IVF) comes near her. We are at our wits end because we live in an 1100 sq ft condo on the 2nd floor and have NO space for anything, no garage and we our extremely underwater and can't move unless we foreclose. It is causing me great anxiety. I want the quarantined kitty to have a good life, but it would be next to impossible to find a new home for a 12 year old cat with anxiety issues :( And the other two really can't be separated as they are joined at the hip. Ugh. I know, if were still waiting for my miracle babies I would be taking this kind of stress ANY day over the stress I was under trying to get pregnant. It is a hard place to be in sometimes because I don't want to complain, but there are still stressors once you have kids they are just very different. More annoying than life threatening (to me, infertility was truly life threatening) I guess, but still there. I am a very lucky girl. I just hope my luck holds out and I can get my son's sister here safely. I will try to update a little more for anyone reading, but I am guessing most people end up on this blog by accident or are searching for a way to get or stay pregnant and don't care to read about parenting. I didn't much care to read about parenthood back when I was in the trenches, so I completely understand. I just want people to know how things turned out. If I could help even one person have his/her miracle baby by learning from what we have done I would be so happy. Please, please, please leave a comment if any of the information has been helpful to you. It would make my journey even more worth it in the end.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Why do people care?

I am not quite sure why people feel the need to ask if your c-section is necessary. I don't ask them if they should really be doing a vaginal birth or natural birth etc. It is really none of my business (or theirs). The same busybodies who make women feel guilty for not breastfeeding seem to be the same who feel the need to tell you why you should do a vaginal birth vs. a c-section. The reality is that the risk of death and complications is virtually the same, though you will not see this on any website promoting "natural" anything. The reality is that it should be the patient's informed choice and not dictated by an insurance company or the government. For many who have had multiple miscarriages or a stillbirth, getting a live baby at the end of it all is the primary goal. In my own situation, I just wanted to get my baby here alive and well and fast, before complications had time to occur. After losing 4 pregnancies and working as hard as I did to achieve this pregnancy I was not about to end up going through a long and stressful (for myself AND my baby) labor. I wanted my child out as quickly as possible even knowing the risks (albeit small) of major surgery. Why do the "pro-vaginal birthers" feel that their opinion is the only one that counts. These are the same women who supposedly promote choice for women and here they are telling other women that it the worst thing that could happen to you is to have a c-section. I think it would be worse to lose my baby, but maybe that is just me... They often argue that women have been giving birth naturally for 500,000 years. Have they ever noticed that prior to modern medicine (including the ability to perform c-sections), the death rate during childbirth was up to 40%.

I guess it comes down to the fact that many of us who worked very hard to achieve our pregnancies do not obsess over something as trivial as thinking we must "experience" vaginal delivery. The more important thing is a healthy baby no matter how we deliver it, don't you think? I think pregnancy was amazing enough, I don't feel the need to "experience" anything but raising my child.

Just had to get that out there...

Oh, and for the record, I was fortunate (though I wouldn't really call it that fortunate!) enough to have had a previous uterine surgery that allowed my doctor to "let" me have a c-section. He would have let me try a vaginal birth, but I just wanted to meet my little boy. And I did.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

still here...

Wow. I can't believe I haven't posted in a month! I have the holidays and in-laws to blame. Not going into detail but suffice it to say that I am happy the holidays are over. incredible news is that I am almost 14 weeks pregnant. And it's a girl just like my hunch told me:) More on that later. I am still waiting on the genetic screen to even think about all of this.I would write more now, but I have to be up early for work. It is getting harder to find clothes that hid the start of a little bump. Typing is keeping my husband awake so more later. It is also hard to type from my new phone. Hope there are still a few people reading along!