Lucky round 7?

So this is our 7th TTC round. We set it up slightly differently, thus am hoping for a different outcome.

We did a yoga class before one of our inseminations, and the little voice in the last post (shavasana?) told me that tonight was THE night. Cool. And ever since then I keep having to remind myself that J is not yet confirmed pregnant.

She looks different to me in the past 2 days, slightly rounder, softer. Is this possible? Am I hallucinating?

We'll find out a BFN or a BFP right around Christmas, conveniently during the Winter Solstice.

In the meantime, I have a work set to finish off and sleeping to do!

Hormones

Our naturopathic doctor sent J to get her hormone levels checked. Everything is perfect. Her egg retrieval score (which would be helpful is we were needing to do IVF) is 15 (anything about 11 is considered good, above 15 is superior).

Now that we're into our new schedule, I'm not sure why it took us so long to get to this point. SO MUCH LESS STRESSFUL.

My FIL sold his house and so we're helping to clean it out. A lot of J's baby/childhood stuff is there, so I got to see her childhood room for the very first time (she has aqua ceilings! Covered in glow-in-the-dark stars! NIFTY!). We rescued her Beatrix Potter collection, and there's some other cute kids stuff that we can hopefully keep (including a very cute red table and chair set, although I'm not sure *where* we would put it). Also lots of family heirloom furniture, that is in serious need of a makeover. However I think we should be able to get it sprayed or painted or something (I could do it, but lets be realistic, I can barely keep my chores under control AS IS!).

We're also in the spot of needing to deal with the very real possibility that we're going to get kicked out of our house sometime in 2012. Since we're hoping to produce offspring in 2012, I don't really want to be moving and packing when J is super pregnant/we have a newborn, so we're looking for a new place to live. Looking to buy. Should be interesting.

That's all for now.

Redraw!

So, I totally ate my words with my last post. A lovely friend, one of my TTC buddies, who had been trying FOR A VERY LONG TIME, is now pregnant (although very early, so not sharing). I am not bitter at all for her. I am so pleased, we talked *a lot* about it. I'm sad to lose my TTC buddy, but excited that the potential always exists to become a about-to-be-mommy buddy.

Last May, when we started this whole thing, we decided to just pick a day and start, and then do every other day until a thermal shift.

I'm not sure how we totally ditched that plan and went into a stupid plan. We're ditching the stupid plan and picking a much more regimented system (start day 10, continue every other day until thermal shift, do no more than 2 consecutive days). BD also expressed concern about losing sperm viability during it's 30 minute transfer (sometimes longer), so he's now coming to our house so the turn around is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 minutes. Much better.

It also means less of me hanging around outside his building looking like we're doing a drug transfer. We've set him up with a Zipcar membership, so the he can just pop in a car and run down and then run back. So much easier for all involved.

I don't know if it's because I'm a NICU nurse, but I can't shake the feeling that we're going to end up in the NICU, or that something's going to happen. And I *need* to shake it, because if I obsess over it, I'll channel that energy and it will come to pass. I think it's because all the blogs I seem to read about new Queer parents involve a stint in the NICU. I will *LOSE MY MIND* if we have to stick around in the NICU.

J's naturopath has put her on a progesterone supplement to help even out her post-ovulatory hormones. Everything's looking better though, she's noticed a big change in the 4 months she's been on fish oil (I've been on fish oil for 3 years and notice a big difference when I stop taking it). Her hormones are a little more balanced. We're working *really* hard to tweak our diet still, and now we're onto the whole getting-more-exercise thing. She's not needing to see our chiro as often, which is good. We got a Groupon for a yoga studio that's sort of close to our house, but when I read the fine print it said it was only good for new clients, and both of us have been there before (but not for a LONG time), so we'll see how this pans out. I may end up selling them or giving them as Christmas presents to someone whose never been to this particular studio before. There's a really great online Yoga community, the fee is super cheap, and we'd only have to pay for 1 person. It can be done at our weird times (seriously, 8am doesn't usually work for me, neither does 5 or 8pm on my working days! And I like to do yoga in the daylight).

We're trying to hand onto stress, J's dad is on the mend now, but he had JUST sold his house, so that will be our week project, which I am honestly curious about. A lot of J's childhood is stored in that house, so I'm anxious to see it. She's sometimes very private about her pre-me life, which I have a hard time understanding, but I think I'm being oversensitive.

Anyways, I have to work tonight. Work has been busy busy busy, we have *very* sick babies and are chronically understaffed, so mistakes are starting to happen, which is *terrifying*. They're also trying to change a lot of things right now, which is not a good time to do that, not when we're just trying to keep the ship upright and on a relatively steady course. Teach people different knots when you're not in the middle of a huge storm... Granted this storm's been going on for almost 4 months now, with no signs of slowing down (although by the end of December/middle of January we'll have discharged something like half of the nursery...).

Crazy to think that life is just moving so fast.

All over again

I just can't seem to shake my bitterness, the heavy emptiness in my arms. Another half dozen people announced their pregnancies on FB, someone I used to follow keeps bragging (in a round-about way "I'm so amazed at how my baby talks to me, anyone else's baby talk to them while they were pregnant", that kind of shit) about her pregnancy...

At least at work I don't feel totally alone in this, a lot of the parents I work with struggled with infertility (we had a set of twins who were their parents 8th IVF attempt). THEY UNDERSTAND the emptiness, the bitterness. I'm finding it harder to connect with my friends' kids, because I don't want to put forth all that emotional energy, I just get burned too many times (a family I was very close to moved to Australia, a good friend had a baby and we hung out a lot while she was on mat leave, but as soon as she went back to work her life got too busy to really do much). I want to be the only one, I want to be the one a baby cries for when I put her down, I want to be one of the only people who can comfort my baby, I want to be the one my injured child come crying to, I want to be the one they snuggle up to, I want to be the receiver of snotty kisses and drooled cheerios.

I think it's extra hard because of work right now, where we have a couple babies who are essentially dying, but their parents are unable (physically and emotionally) to come into the nursery to be with them. It sickens me (because I think "how can you leave your baby to die like this, alone and suffering?"), and my brilliant and wonderful and compassionate wife always reminds me that that is their journey, and not to compare mine to it. Also not to pass judgment on their ability or inability to do what I feel is right.

I know it's hard on J too. I have to put on my game face every month when she bleeds, and thankfully 90% of the time I'm OK with the situation we're in right now. I resigned myself at 16 when I came out that becoming a mother would be more complicated for me, but ultimately I didn't care how it happened (biological vs adoption).

I'm just weepy and angsty, and I know I'm not alone with these feelings. It's also hard when our parents desperately want us to produce grandchildren.

It's just that this empty ache hurts so much.

C'est L'Halloween!

I'm finding blogging difficult, mostly because I feel like it's all been said before. I have nothing new to add to the conversation. I really enjoy my queer mommy blogs that I read (but only a couple are pregnant, and none are TTC). TTC is tough, but it's forced some fun changes!

J's dad had a big heart attack on Saturday. We were worried that she was going to ovulate when she was away for the weekend, but the stress of this should push it back again. I've had to really take over and run the house, which is tough, since I'm working so much, but it's getting there. The house is a mess, but who cares??

It's getting towards cold and flu season, and vaccines are once again the hot topic. To vaccinate, to not vaccinate. I think we will end up opting for a combination of both, giving MMR and DAPT (which provide protection against measels, mumps, rubella, diptheria, tetanus, polio, and the one that I can't remember is whooping cough), and skipping out/delaying some of the other ones. How easily we have forgotten the high infant mortality rate we used to have in the developed world, my generation never lived through the devastating effects of polio, or hospitals full of babies dying of the whooping cough. There was a mumps outbreak in Vancouver last year, terrifying for all of our sick babies, especially when ONE OF THE PARENTS BECAME INFECTED.

Something else no one talks about is RSV, a virus that causes cold AND flu like symptoms, but for small babies with their small airways can mean that they become very very very sick or even die (the virus causes a layer of mucous to build up inside the airways, and in babies who are already compromised because of short/damaged/extrememly fragile airways, this is a death sentence). Our respiratory compromised babies will all receive it, and I send many prayers for the babies whom we have cared for, that they will make it through the winter. We have one baby in the unit whose parents have refused all vaccinations. He was born at 26 weeks and was *so* incredibly sick, we thought he was going to die on at least a dozen occasions, yet he didn't. He has survived so much, it would be so awful if he died of RSV.

Anyways. J is now seeing a chiropractor. Her pelvis is all out of whack, which compromises the nerve function and blood flow to her pelvis. A couple of quick adjustments and we were out. She'll go back a couple of times a week for the next little while.

My cat is holding a dead bird, which means I have to go and bury the poor thing. My cat doesn't kill them, she steals them from the neighbour's cat who kills them. Sometimes she buries them under the deck.

Anyways, the weather is crummy here, but that's what happens in October. Peace out for now!

October

Sooo... we HAD been using what we thought was adequate fertility charting. But boy were we wrong. I got all concerned that J wasn't ovulating, and we were wondering when we were going to have to fix this, and then we plotted everything on the Taking Control of Your Fertility charts, and VOILA.

EVERYTHING IS FINE. Mostly. She has what would be considered a delayed reaction to her progesterone, which may make pregnancy difficult. We realized she's been having a pretty steady luteal phase (long enough to actually BECOME pregnant, a nice clean 11 days), but her temperature rise is slow and kinda dippy. This is *easy* to fix.

So we hit 12 days post-luteal, with only a little bit of spotting, no cramping, and still a high temperature. We got excited.

Day 13, heavy bleeding, temperature drop, much disappointment. J's sure she was pregnant, her energy changed, she had to pee OMG ALL THE TIME, things like that. So, it's a question of did we lose it because of her progesterone, because the embryo wasn't good, or because of something else.

We ordered an actual BBT thermometer (everything I had read up to this point had said that an actual BBT thermometer wasn't needed, just one that went one decimal point, but we need the extra decimal place). I'm going to pick up some progesterone cream and see if that works too (she's also on stuff to help her body process the hormones, thanks to our naturopath!).

I've been working a ton of OT, working to pay down consumer debt so we're in a good place to raise our kids (also because J carry's student loan debt, I don't want to be overrun with debt repayment when we only have 1 income! Yikes!). The OT is going fine, I find that because I work 3 days and 1 night, I have more energy and can DO more OT, which is nice.

That's all for now!

More than this

I've quickly discovered that I'm in love with my job. I hit my 1 year mark September 15th as a NICU nurse and have only have small short moments of going "oh god, why am I doing this??" (almost exclusively during a night shift at 3 in the morning when one of my babies has puked all over themselves and their bedding and I have to pee and I'm in the room by myself because my buddy is on break and I realize there's no more clean linen in the room and my IV is beeping and etc etc etc).

I've cried ONCE, so that's pretty good!! I adore my co-workers for the most part. I had my yearly review done (my "boss", one of a dozen, but the one who works with me and knows me best, sits down and goes through EVERYTHING with me, it's actually really handy!). It was overwhelmingly positive. There was a tiny blip a couple weeks ago, but that was a totally stupid mistake (and it wasn't even a mistake, but it's a long story and involves a pee covered bed).

One thing my boss said was that she really admires and appreciate how open I am about my family, about who I am (read: sexuality). And I am open. Someone referred to my wife as my roommate the other day (????). My co-workers know we're trying to conceive, they ask questions about how we're doing it, I answer patiently and with as much information as I think they can handle repeatedly. Everyone is *so* supportive. I am the only queer female nurse (I think) on my unit, which is hard to swallow (SINCE THERE ARE 200 OF US), but that's how it is. My co-workers are awesome, since we're all a bunch of gossips. There is one other queer dude, but that's it (and he's not super out).

I feel very strongly that is it my job to be out, to answer questions, to be a resource to my co-workers. We deal with families in crisis every single day, and worrying about your sick/premature baby PLUS dealing with staff who don't understand your family is not something anyone should deal with. I can't imagine worrying that the staff's homophobia will interfere in your child's care, and it makes me sick to think that this is possible in other places. In general, Vancouverites are so laid back and accepting that nobody cares!

I'm debating whether to start another blog on NICU specific thing, I feel like I have a lot to share about how to survive the NICU, tips and important things like breastfeeding and so on and so forth. We see the sickest babies in the province, and sometimes they are there forever and ever, and there's just so much information I wish I had, that I can't seem to find on the internet... but we'll see. I'll ask some of the parents and get their feedback...