Snow day!

Snow days are just as much fun as an adult as they were when I was a kid. I was stressing out about work today as we are short staffed at work and a teacher was off and another one was leaving early. So, needless to say, when I looked outside this morning and saw the sheet of ice on the ground, I got a little excited. I called the owner of the school where I work and she said ok to close today. I have to admit it...I did a little happy dance. Now as a kid I would have spent the day outside playing in the snow. As an adult I spent the day in my pajamas on the couch with a big comforter and watched movies. It was great. I love snow days!

Twice in one day? Insane!

So, I completely forgot to put an update about where we stand as far as getting pregnant goes. It totally thought last month was it but it was not. This month I started charting my temperature and using OPK (ovulation predictor kit). As of yet I have not ovulated but it should be any day now. I am trying to time the baby-making just right. There are several different points of view on how often to "do it." Some say every other day. Some say every day. If the man has a lower sperm count you should go every other day so that they have a chance to regenerate. Seeing how Courtney has not had his "boys" tested we don't have an answer to that question. If this month doesn't work then I think we both need to get the ball rolling on getting tests done to find out why nothing has happened in going on two years.

I did hear back from my doctor about some follow up bloodwork I had done for my thyroid. After 2 months on the medication they prescribed me I am now "normal." Good to know. I haven't lost any weight nor do I feel less tired so I am not seeing any kind of difference since I started the medication. Other than the fact that I'm "normal."

I came across this blog http://www.confessionsofacfhusband.com/ a few weeks ago and it is an amazing blog. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who has half a brain or half a heart. It's a sweet, young couple. The wife has cystic fibrosis and they unexpectedly got pregnant as she was about to go on a transplant list for new lungs. They stuck with the pregnancy, gave birth to a micro-preemie at 24 weeks, I believe. The husband updates the blog several times a day and is such a wonderful husband and father. It is inspiring to read about their lives. As I've said before, I'm not religious and don't believe in god but I do admire and respect those that TRULY believe and live their lives accordingly. And this guy does. Plus he's got a sense of humor. He's a saint if I ever saw one.

Frankly my dear, I DO give a damn!

So this post really has nothing to do with getting pregnant or motherhood whatsover but it was something I was thinking about last night as I finished one of my favorite books. Why do filmmakers sometimes drastically change a book when they make it into a movie? Sometimes you can't even recognize the book at all. I realize that sometimes the book is just an inspiration for a movie but for the ones that are supposed to be a visualization of the book...why change it? My favorite book of all time is Gone With the Wind and then Scarlett (written by another author but still very good and very true to the characters) which is the sequel. Then my favorite movie of all time is of course, Gone With the Wind. I know that the book was very long and even though they cut out a lot of things the movie was long as well. BUT...they stayed true to the book and didn't cut out anything too critical. In the book, Scarlett had a child with her first husband, Charles Hamilton and another child with her second husband, Frank Kennedy. They were cut out in the movie. Makes sense since they didn't really play that big a part in the book. They also cut out a lot of the secondary characters from her hometown and some of the secondary plots. Nothing that really changed the heart of the story. Now as far as the made for tv movie for the book Scarlett....that's a different story. They stuck with the removal of Scarlett's two kids from her first two marriages. They weren't vital to the story. They did add Will Benteen, who was cut out in the first movie. He was a soldier who appeared after the war was over and helped out at Tara and eventually married Scarlett's sister Suellen. He wasn't a big deal in the first book to be needed in the movie but he was definitely needed for the second movie. I'll have to rewatch the movie this weekend to refresh my memory but I think the beginning of the movie held fairly true to the story. Once Scarlett goes to Ireland and has the baby is when it starts to stray. The relationship Scarlett develops with her new daughter does not do justice to the book. Then the story goes off on a tangent which ends up with Scarlett being accused for the murder of some Lord even though it was her knocked up maid who was carrying his child. Where in the hell did they come up with that? They had Scarlett on trial and Rhett came and saved her. Ridiculous! This is a women who does NOT need saving! That was what the whole story was about! She gave up her life in America after it didn't work out with Rhett and decided to start a new life in Ireland with her daughter. She built her own town from the ground up for crying out loud! I also didn't like the actress who played Scarlett. I think it was Joanna Waley-Kilmer or something to that effect. First of all....she had BROWN eyes. Scarlett's eyes were green! At least put some colored contacts on! In spite of all it's shortcomings and those of the infinite movies that spawned from books it's still fun to see the characters that started in the back of my mind come to life on the big screen. Even if they don't have the right colored eyes.

Could this be it?

Courtney and I just got back from Mexico and it was so nice to have a week of relaxation. We really needed it. It was also good to see his parents and some friends of ours from California who we haven't seen since we moved. They had a son a little over a year ago so it was great to finally meet him. He's such a cutie. Courtney's parent's are going to retire in a small town called San Felipe which is fast becoming a retirement community for many Americans. It's a picturesque little town and I definitely look forward to visiting again! I was sad to leave but so happy to get back home to our doggies. They missed us so much!

Hot Springs in Puertocito

View of San Felipe from Courtney's parents' community

Sticking my feet in the not so warm water. (It was winter there...60 degrees...lol)

Derek, Amy and Jake, Me and Courtney, Rosalie and Chuck

Puertocito was so tiny this was their Post Office and Library. Seriously.

And these are the little angels we were missing!

So, according to my not very accurate calculations, I believe I ovulated while we were on vacation. Good thing, since we were able to sneak in a few "baby making" sessions. ;o) I'm hoping we timed everything right. I should know in the next few days as my period is due any day now. I plan to take a pregnancy test this Saturday if it doesn't show by then. I'm feeling like it's about to start but that could also be a sign of pregnancy. Grrrr...mother nature is a bitch!

Another year bites the dust....

Well, it's now 2008 and hopefully something fruitful will come out of this year. I received somewhat good news from the doctor. She said that I have an under active thyroid. Basically it means that my thyroid gland is under producing a hormone that is sent to my brain which in turn overproduces another hormone to compensate. This is the main reason I'm always tired and have gained some weight over the last year. She said it really shouldn't affect the chances of getting pregnant but that if I was to become pregnant it would be important to stay on the medicine she prescribed me so that the baby doesn't develop a thyroid problem. So I've been on the medicine for almost a month now and I have to go back for more blood work in a few weeks. I haven't' really noticed a difference in anything yet but she said it would take about a month for it to work it's way in to my system.

Courtney and I are going to Mexico to visit his parents in two weeks and I was hoping to drop 20 pounds by then, but no such luck. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she? Oh well. We'll still have a great time. We haven't had a real vacation since our honeymoon over two years ago. This will be a much welcomed and needed week. We haven't seen his mom since we moved back to MD two years ago although we have seen his step dad a few times when he was in MD for work. It'll be nice to catch up with them. Plus our friends and their son will be there and we haven't seen them since she was pregnant so that will be an added bonus. I know Courtney misses his family and friends and the whole San Francisco scene but I think he's happy here in MD. I know how he feels though. I moved away from my friends and family when I moved to CA to be with him. Maybe one day we will move back but the reason he wanted to move us here was so that we would be close to my family when we started our own family. What a sweetheart. Hopefully we don't have to wait much longer for that.

As far as trying to get pregnant, we are taking this month off. I just signed up for Aflac at work and enrolled in their short term disability insurance so that I will still get 60% of my pay when I go on maternity leave. The only catch is that you have to have the insurance for 10 months before they will give maternity benefits. So we start trying again in February and if successful, hope for a full term pregnancy. I just don't know how I would afford to be off work for 6 weeks without pay. I like to plan ahead if I can.

Courtney got a bonus from work (finally!) so we treated ourselves to a new TV. We haven't had a new anything other than our bed and mattress set a few years back. We usually take hand me downs from family so this was really nice. We bought a 37 inch flat screen HDTV television and it is NICE! We watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3 on it last night and it was AWESOME! If we could just get a new couch.....

To adopt or not to adopt....That is the question.

Adoption has been running through my head a lot lately. If I plan for the worst (can't get pregnant) then I can't get my hopes up too high, right? I hope it doesn't come to that but if it does, I think I would, eventually, be o.k. with it. I would always wonder about what a biological child of mine might have looked like. Would they have my nose? Would they have Courtney's eyes? Would they be shy and quiet like me or loud and outgoing like Courtney? That part might always be in the back of my mind and I guess I would just have to deal with it. If it's meant to happen then it will happen. If it's not then we will adopt and be happy with it.

I sent away for some information on international adoption as well as domestic adoption just to get the ball rolling and see what it all entails. If we go the adoption route I think we will do domestic. International seems very expensive. Not that domestic isn't, it's just a little less expensive than international. But then again there are downsides to domestic. If an expectant mother chooses us she could change her mind once the baby is born and would be something I don't know if I could handle. To have it so close and then have it ripped away again would be awful. With international (China mainly) the children are orphans. Ugh. So many little decisions on top of it being a HUGE decision to begin with. Courtney said we shouldn't start worrying ourselves about it until we have to. As much as I hate to admit it, he's right.

Tomorrow is my doctor's appointment to find out the results from my bloodwork. Apparently my thyroid results were abnormal. My initial bloodwork said that my TSH level (I don't even know what that is!) was 8.27 and that the normal range was .40 - 4.50. I'm very anxious about the appointment. If it was nothing to worry about she would have just called. Right? I just hope that if something is wrong and it has affected us getting pregnant that there is something they/I/we can do to fix it. If so then we will do it, obviously, and go full speed ahead with babymaking! If after several months of that and I'm not pregnant then I will call my OBGYN to discuss the next step. I plan on bringing up us trying to get pregnant at the appointment but she is just my primary care physician. I'm not sure how much help she will be concerning getting pregnant. It never hurts to ask though!

The beginning of the middle

Me, Penny, Courtney and Beaker in our Christmas Card picture.

Although this isn't the beginning of our journey of trying to start a family, it is the start of documenting it for all the world to read. It's a little weird to think that perfect strangers may be reading some of the more intimate details of my life but what the heck?

So to start at the beginning I think we started trying to get pregnant in July of 2006. Courtney, my husband, was now in Maryland after about 6 months in California and we had a place that had two bedrooms so we figured, why not? I had always wanted children and I pretty much convinced Courtney that we were ready. He wasn't 100% ready but close enough to start trying. Me, being the naive person that I am, thought we would have no problems so when it didn't happen in the first few months I wasn't too worried. I think the first time I was truly upset that we failed again was in October 2006. I thought I had some classic pregnancy symptoms but when I got my period I was devestated. Each month after that got harder and harder. Each period felt like a punishment that I can't even begin to describe. We tried everything. I charted my temperature, figured out when I ovulated, had sex every day, had sex every other day, put a pillow under my hips, did it in the morning, did it in the evening, did it twice a day, took fertility enhancing vitamins, tried progesterone cream, cut out caffeine, cut out alcohol, ate healthier, you name it, I tried it. But to no avail.

In April 2006 I found myself without a job and without health insurance so that put our babymaking on hold. I was glad to be done with that job as I dreaded going to work each day and it was stressful but now I had no insurance which is not only bad for someone trying to get pregnant but very bad for someone who has diabetes. Luckily I can purchase my insulin through a canadian online pharmacy without a perscription affordably. I had about a month off before starting another job (total trainwreck which is another post completely!). I was only there for 3 months so we started half-heartedly trying right before I left there.

Now I am at my current job, which I, for the most part, enjoy very much. I feel secure in my position here. I make good money and I have a really good staff. I have health insurance once again and we are trying our hearts out to get pregnant. I had some bloodwork done last month for my diabetes and my doctor also had some tests done for cholesterol and thyroid. Apparently my thyroid levels were abnormal so I had to get more bloodwork done. I go back next Wednesday to discuss the results. It may be that I have a thyroid problem and possibly this is why we haven't been able to get pregnant yet. This could also be the reason that I've gained 20-30 pounds in the last year. I just hope that it is treatable and we can move forward from here. We will see.

A few of my friends and family know about us trying to get pregnant. It's not something that I'm trying to hide but it's not something I tell everyone. I did in the beginning but after several months of "Are you pregnant yet???" it hurt too much to talk about openly. I can't tell you how sick I am of all the "advice" I get from friends/family/strangers. "Don't think about it and it will happen." "It will happen when you're really ready." "It'll happen in God's time." Well, you can all bite me. Unless you have been through this then don't try to put a bright and shiny spin on the situation. How can I not think about it? It's something I've wanted since I was a kid myself! I work around children all day...how can I not think about having one of my own? I'm ready now dammit! God's time? Sorry, I don't believe in god. I apologize if you find that offensive, but I don't. If you do, then great. To each his own. I don't want to start any religious debates here.

Wow. I started this thinking I wouldn't have much to say but looks like I had plenty to say. I plan on keeping up with this as it is a nice way to get all of what I'm feeling out in the open. I mean, where else can I openly admit that I curse every pregnant woman I see? I know that sounds absolutely awful, but it's true. Yes, I am jealous. 100% completely jealous. Some days are easier than others. I'm human. It's normal to have these kind of feelings. I know I'm not the only one. I'm just being honest about it. I just hope that one day I will be the one who's being "cursed."