We have a daughter who is less than one year old. And I am constantly thinking about when we will get pregnant again! We have struggled with infertility for years. It took a lot of time and money to get pregnant with our daughter.
Once we finally got pregnant, I felt relieved that I didn't have to deal with infertility again for a while. But the thought still loomed in my head. We had a magical pregnancy and delivery, but as soon as our baby girl arrived, I started thinking about our next baby.
When would we get pregnant again? Would we be able to get pregnant naturally this time? Or would we embark yet again on a several-year journey of medications, ovulation testing, procedures, ultrasounds, waiting, more waiting, hoping to get pregnant?
I can't help thinking sometimes that my infertility has been "cured". It's easy to think that because we have one baby having another one will be a piece of cake. At least that's what I'm hoping for.
We are not under so much stress and pressure to have another baby right away this time. For years the only thought that occupied my mind was "I want to get pregnant now!". I am more content and happy now that we have our baby girl. But I still wonder when the next time is that we will get pregnant.
Will it be in a month? 6 months? 1 year? 3 years? I KNOW that we will get pregnant again and have more children. That's a fact. But the not knowing WHEN is so hard!
We had discussed birth control when my daughter was born and made the decision to not take any kind of birth control. We truly felt like if we got pregnant right away (even though it's not advised or good for a postpartum body such as mine) we would be thrilled.
And I truly would be thrilled! Now that our baby is older and not really a newborn, getting pregnant would be so great! I always wanted my kids to be close in age. Maybe not 9 months close, but within a couple years of each other.
Some days I try not to think about it much, since stress is not good for a woman who wants to get pregnant. But I can't help thinking about it.
Whenever it does happen, my world will transform again in to a magical land of pregnancy hormones and dreams of a larger family. I love being pregnant.
August 16, 2011
August 15, 2011
Clutter
I am talking about clutter.
The endless stacks of paper and mail on my kitchen table. The cereal boxes and leftover cookies on the counter. The clothes on the floor. The random hair accessories in the bathroom drawers. The overfilled closets. Wrapping paper and bows.
Clutter is everywhere! It's been taking over my house slowly for the past couple of years. But I hate it!
It gets in the way. It looks horrible! When I "clean" for guests, everything unsightly gets put in our extra storage room, and then I lock and bolt the door so no one can see what our house really looks like.
I spend waaaaaay too long looking for important documents, or the measuring tape that I can't find for the life of me.
I'm telling you, clutter in the home can seriously interfere with happy living!
But today is a new day. I've been reading a book on how to de-clutter and it's given me some great ideas. I've always wanted that immaculate looking house, where everything has it's place and there's a place for everything.
As a perfectionist though, I become OVERWHELMED just thinking about de-cluttering.
This is my normal thought process,
"I want to organize my room and bathroom. So I'll start by cleaning off the top of the dresser. Boy, when did I accumulate so many hair accessories and pieces of jewelry? I guess I'll make a place in the bathroom for all this stuff so I can clear off the top of the dresser. But all the bathroom drawers are cluttered and full of random brushes, combs, floss, curling irons, hair products, what do I do with those? If I clean out the bathroom drawers, then I'll have room to put my jewelry and hair accessories in there. But where will I put the random curling irons? I could put them in a box downstairs! But wait, before I put them downstairs, I have to organize the shelves in the basement by color, size, item, season. In order to do that, I have to buy more storage boxes and go through all the seasonal stuff. Where should I store that extra Christmas tree we have down there? Now that I'm thinking of it, I should go through all the Christmas ornaments one by one and get rid of all the cracked ones........."See? My thought process makes me so overwhelmed that I keep pushing off this project. I am going to set goals and tell myself that each day I need to set aside some time, whether it is a chunk of time (1-2 hours) or 10 minute increments (the latter is more realistic for me since I have a baby).
I WILL DE-CLUTTER MY HOME SO THAT I CAN HAVE A HAPPY LIVING SPACE!
August 11, 2011
Laughing at Infertility (Part 2)
I found this website which brought great relief to my situation. However, I feel like I missed out during my years of inferitlity, because it wasn't until after I got pregnant and delivered my daughter that I stumbled upon this website.
There are others out there just like this one, but it helped me to realize that there are hundreds, no, thousands, of other women and couples out there who are struggling just like I did to get pregnant. Struggling with the same emotions and questions that I struggled with on a daily basis.
All those years I thought I was the only one out there. I didn't want to talk about it to anyone. I didn't want to laugh, to smile, to be happy. I thought, "Poor little me, no one else could be hurting as much as I am."
I was pretty self-absorbed. But the other night I spent a while reading through several reasons why to laugh at infertility. I LOVE these "Birds and Bees" videos on YouTube:
Jane's Pregnant
I had a window
They must not be working
On a different note, I just found this video of the song "I Would Die For That" sung by Kellie Coffey that made me cry!
Seriously though, take a moment to laugh at your situation. It's the only way to get through life. I wish I had learned this lesson years ago, it would have helped a lot during those long sleepless nights.
There are others out there just like this one, but it helped me to realize that there are hundreds, no, thousands, of other women and couples out there who are struggling just like I did to get pregnant. Struggling with the same emotions and questions that I struggled with on a daily basis.
All those years I thought I was the only one out there. I didn't want to talk about it to anyone. I didn't want to laugh, to smile, to be happy. I thought, "Poor little me, no one else could be hurting as much as I am."
I was pretty self-absorbed. But the other night I spent a while reading through several reasons why to laugh at infertility. I LOVE these "Birds and Bees" videos on YouTube:
Jane's Pregnant
I had a window
They must not be working
On a different note, I just found this video of the song "I Would Die For That" sung by Kellie Coffey that made me cry!
Seriously though, take a moment to laugh at your situation. It's the only way to get through life. I wish I had learned this lesson years ago, it would have helped a lot during those long sleepless nights.
Laughing at Infertility (Part 1)
My husband and I have struggled with infertility for years. I never thought in a million years when we got married that we would have so much trouble getting pregnant as we did.
After 3 years of TTC (trying to conceive), we finally became pregnant through IVF (in-vitro fertilization).
This was our 2nd attempt at IVF and luckily we were successful and became pregnant with our daughter. IVF was the the last option we had before we would consider adoption. We had tried everything we could to get pregnant before resorting to IVF. We tried taking expensive medications; clomid, metformin, levothyroxine, femara; and when those didn't work we went to injectable medications like FSH. Nothing worked. Then we tried IUI's (intrauterine insemination). After 4 rounds of those, we decided to try IVF.
Throughout out the years of TTC, my emotions took a toll. I was depressed every month when my cycle started, or when we found out that the hundreds of dollars we'd just spent on last month's meds didn't work. Or when we found out the IVF cycle that cost us $$$ didn't work. You get the idea.
Crying myself to sleep became a habit. I tried to look at the positive side of things; how my husband and I had an opportunity to enjoy married life a little bit longer before having kids, how we were able to get into a house sooner than we planned on, how I was able to work full-time longer and save up more money. But all of these "positives" were outweighed in my mind by the biggest burden I'd ever felt in my life, my inability to conceive!
I thought to myself constantly, "Why am I not able to conceive? Why does this have to happen to me?" The doctors couldn't find a reason why I was infertile (my husband was absolutely fine, in fact, better than fine. His "swimmers" as we like to call them, should have won an Olympic Gold Medal for their record time and agility. The timing of my cycles had always been a little off, so the idea was to get my cycles more regular and take meds to make me ovulate more regularly. But once that was happening and we still couldn't get pregnant, I felt helpless.
All I wanted was answers. I wanted to know what else I could possibly do to increase my chances at getting pregnant. During all this time, I felt utterly alone. I felt like I was the only person on the face of the planet; no wait; the entire universe; who couldn't get pregnant.
But I was so utterly wrong! I knew there were others out there who were infertile, but they all seemed to get pregnant quicker than I did. I never wanted to talk about my infertility trials to anyone but my husband. I didn't even want to tell our families about what was going on. That would signal defeat in my mind. It would be like acknowledging my defaults in front of the whole world. They would all know that something was wrong with me. Was it too much to ask that all I wanted to do was provide grandchildren for our parents?
After going through the trials of infertility for 3 years, finally getting pregnant, and having our beautiful daughter, infertility is still looming in my mind. It never goes away. Yes, I was able to get pregnant which is one of the greatest blessings in my life. But that didn't take my infertility away. For 9 months I looked like a fertile woman, but I was still incapable of conceiving on my own.
I think a lot about having our next child. How all of this will come back to haunt me. Will we need to do IVF again? Will we finally be able to conceive naturally? These questions swim around in my head all the time.
I felt powerless for years. How could anything possibly be positive about this situation? What could I possibly find funny about our infertility?
And then I found out..........
After 3 years of TTC (trying to conceive), we finally became pregnant through IVF (in-vitro fertilization).
This was our 2nd attempt at IVF and luckily we were successful and became pregnant with our daughter. IVF was the the last option we had before we would consider adoption. We had tried everything we could to get pregnant before resorting to IVF. We tried taking expensive medications; clomid, metformin, levothyroxine, femara; and when those didn't work we went to injectable medications like FSH. Nothing worked. Then we tried IUI's (intrauterine insemination). After 4 rounds of those, we decided to try IVF.
Throughout out the years of TTC, my emotions took a toll. I was depressed every month when my cycle started, or when we found out that the hundreds of dollars we'd just spent on last month's meds didn't work. Or when we found out the IVF cycle that cost us $$$ didn't work. You get the idea.
Crying myself to sleep became a habit. I tried to look at the positive side of things; how my husband and I had an opportunity to enjoy married life a little bit longer before having kids, how we were able to get into a house sooner than we planned on, how I was able to work full-time longer and save up more money. But all of these "positives" were outweighed in my mind by the biggest burden I'd ever felt in my life, my inability to conceive!
I thought to myself constantly, "Why am I not able to conceive? Why does this have to happen to me?" The doctors couldn't find a reason why I was infertile (my husband was absolutely fine, in fact, better than fine. His "swimmers" as we like to call them, should have won an Olympic Gold Medal for their record time and agility. The timing of my cycles had always been a little off, so the idea was to get my cycles more regular and take meds to make me ovulate more regularly. But once that was happening and we still couldn't get pregnant, I felt helpless.
All I wanted was answers. I wanted to know what else I could possibly do to increase my chances at getting pregnant. During all this time, I felt utterly alone. I felt like I was the only person on the face of the planet; no wait; the entire universe; who couldn't get pregnant.
But I was so utterly wrong! I knew there were others out there who were infertile, but they all seemed to get pregnant quicker than I did. I never wanted to talk about my infertility trials to anyone but my husband. I didn't even want to tell our families about what was going on. That would signal defeat in my mind. It would be like acknowledging my defaults in front of the whole world. They would all know that something was wrong with me. Was it too much to ask that all I wanted to do was provide grandchildren for our parents?
After going through the trials of infertility for 3 years, finally getting pregnant, and having our beautiful daughter, infertility is still looming in my mind. It never goes away. Yes, I was able to get pregnant which is one of the greatest blessings in my life. But that didn't take my infertility away. For 9 months I looked like a fertile woman, but I was still incapable of conceiving on my own.
I think a lot about having our next child. How all of this will come back to haunt me. Will we need to do IVF again? Will we finally be able to conceive naturally? These questions swim around in my head all the time.
I felt powerless for years. How could anything possibly be positive about this situation? What could I possibly find funny about our infertility?
And then I found out..........
August 4, 2011
Looking Plain
It's one of those days.
You know, the kind of day where you wake up, and before you even look at yourself in the mirror, you feel it.
That feeling of looking horrid. Unattractive. Ghastly. Homely.
And no matter how much make-up you put on, how long you spend doing your hair, choosing a cute outfit, that feeling is still there, because when you remove all that stuff, it's still you underneath it all.
I try not to think about it that much. But it's hard not to wish I looked like somebody else. There is that rare day when I actually DO like how I look, but those days are few and far between.
I look in the mirror, and my eyes immediately focus on those blemishes all over my face. The oily skin, the pimples, the unkempt hair.
Why can't I look like those people that wake up and instantly look gorgeous? They don't have to do a thing and they already look 100% better than I do! It drives me nuts how some people can pull it all off without even trying!
My self-esteem wanes sometimes. Like when I see ordinary people, not celebrities, but ordinary people in my neighborhood who look so breathtakingly gorgeous that they could be models!
I know I am sounding so vain right now, but I think inside all of us there is that occasional feeling of jealousy, even if we do feel comfortable in our own skin.
My sweet husband is always telling me how beautiful I am. I am truly blessed to be married to him! But I still want to KNOW for myself that I am beautiful.
Each of us has our own insecurities, whether it's our weight, height, hair color, skin tone, teeth, eyes.
I just have to stick with my gut and realize that I am the way I am because that's the way I was made. My husband loves me for who I am, and for the way I look. I can't change that.
I don't want to change that. Despite my insecurities, I do know that deep down, I am beautiful.
I am unique.
And that helps bring my spirits up, along with a little mascara and lip gloss!
How do you boost your self-esteem on those days when you feel like you just poked your head up out of a garbage can?
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