YIKES

I can’t believe how much time has passed since we have posted! Life has been a bit crazy over here. We both have been sick. H was home the first two days of this week, and I although I have been sick have been at work because I am on trial – oh yes and I started clomid on Monday. It has been a heck of a week – but I really don’t think that I have been feeling anything abnormal from the clomid, except maybe I am more hot. But that could also be because I have been standing up in front of a jury talking – I wish I did not have a huge propensity to blush.

So on the baby front: we test this weekend for positive ovulation – and we go into the dr.’s office on Monday regardless of the result. I am feeling hopeful and sort like we might be going towards a cliff and I am gearing my self up to jump off. (that sounds like I am not excited – I really am – it is a strange thing though this baby-making business).

beside our bed is our….

we were tagged for a meme by inlocoparentis

Here are the RULES: post what you’ve got on the table (chair, nightstand, whatever) beside your bed. Leave nothing out. Nothing. Link back to the kind person who tagged you and then tag 3 other folks. Really tag them – none of this “whoever hasn’t done this meme yet” tagging.

Okay well, you know it is not anything too exciting because I had to go back into the bedroom to see:

Me: light, Ihome (machine that plays Ipod and my alarm), plant, strange cage like candle holder, jetblue eye cover, golden compass trilogy, glasses.

H: Kleenex, box of Zyrtec D, 3 bottles of lotion, water bowl for cats, control for Ihome, an orchid, clock that currently has a dead battery, light, a lint remover, compression socks for her finger that she had surgery on this winter.

I guess we have fairly boring bedside tables (no reflection on us of course!). We tagging 3 blogs who we always read and should be better at commenting on: familystylelove, love +love = marriage, and  word to your mother(s)

Give me the good stuff

That is what I said on Thursday, after still not showing any signs of ovulation.   Now obviously clomid is not exactly “good stuff” but I am hoping I start ovulating normally and consistently.   I wanted to be patient and just wait to cycle and then have a “natural” attempt.  But it is not as if I would wait then just get pregnant for sure in April – and I just want to get started.  So now I am taking provera and hopefully I will get my period this week.  (Does anyone out there know how long it takes for your period to show after you start provera?) And then it will be clomid on starting on day 5.   I am nervous.

H was more wanting to wait for a natural cycle, mainly because she is convinced we will have twins, and I was pushing for starting the drugs – I won… smile. BUT now I am nervous – I don’t want to become crazy, and I know that I will start a trial (I am defense attorney) just as I feel most vulnerable because that is the way work happens.   Like all other things in the process I am just trying to be open to what comes.

Why am I  feeling this mix of excitement and a whole big bunch of nerves?

This is going to be an adventure…

So this has to be a quick post because L and her mom are in the other room waiting for me so we can watch the last two episodes of Project Runway, but I just had to get this out…

L’s mom is visiting for the weekend, which is great.  I love her a lot and she is a wonderful person.  She used to be a home birth midwife, so she is an excellent resource when we have had any questions about anything baby-related.  But of course she has her very strong opinions about things.  Well, today we went to a book store to buy a magazine I just found online called “Brain, Child” that bills itself as a “literary parenting magazine.”  I don’t know anything about it beyond these two things: 1) Barbara Kingsolver has written for it and I love her and her books so much.  2)  In their last magazine there was an article about a lesbian couple considering the issue of circumcision for their son.  It seemed like an interesting article and I appreciate any magazine including a story about a lesbian family that was not focusing, with shock, on the fact that two women can raise healthy, well-adjusted children (gasp!).  Anyway, I was telling L’s mom, S, about this article and she says, as we are riding the escalator up to the magazine section, “Why would you even consider circumcising?  It is barbaric.”  She went on to talk about all the reasons that she thinks it is a horrible thing to do, including telling us that she has had sex with both circumcised and uncircumcised men and “there is a big difference in terms of sensitivity.”  Something about me: I don’t like thinking about my parents (or L’s) having sex.  I know it is narrow minded of me.  I hope they do have sex and it is very fulfilling for them, but I at no time want to think about it.  I especially don’t want to hear, in public with a million people all around, about the relative sensitivity of the men’s penises any parental figure has had sex with.  No.

Anyway, all this to say that I know circumcision is a serious topic that L and I have to consider.  We don’t have strong feelings either way at this point, but have more research and talking to do about it.  But now I feel like if we decide to do it, L’s mom will see us as barbaric, which is difficult to deal with.  I think this isn’t really even about this one decision, I am just going to have to get used to making choices that others may not agree with and be okay with that.   I know that other people always feel like they have a right to tell others how to parent and what the best decisions are for their children, and parents have to learn to deal with that.  This isn’t something I am super good at now, but I will certainly have to learn — starting tomorrow — when L’s mom accompanies us to the RE.  I am a little worried about it because S is really into natural everything and we might have to make a decision tomorrow about L going on Clomid.  It should be interesting.  Hopefully L is ovulating and we will be able to start inseminating (which L already told her mother she may not be present for), or we will be able to make some of these decisions after her mom leaves on Tuesday.  Whatever happens, please wish us luck.

Now I better go, I hear Tim Gunn calling to me from the other room.

Butterflies

I was just looking at my calendar for next week and saw our appointment for Monday morning with the RE and I got butterflies in my stomach.  After both of our surgeries and the Bar Exam I have to admit that I was advocating that we wait a little while before starting the process.  I thought it would be a good idea to just relax and be “normal” for a while before adding another potentially stressful thing into our lives.  We were both so sad in November when we went to the RE thinking that we were going to do an insemination that day only to find out that L. needed to have surgery.  I have been scared about jumping in again.  We have been going through so much since Thanksgiving; from that crazy excitement to the agony of defeat (to borrow that old sports show introduction).  I wanted to take a break, breathe, focus on our relationship, and just have fun without worrying about any surgeries or big tests or anything.  When I mentioned this to L. she got really sad and I saw how important it is to her that we start.  As she said in her last post, she is concerned that her body is “weird” or unable to do this thing.  For her, starting the process IS being the “normal” that I was wishing for.  It makes sense to me to start now.  And, after first feeling a little torn about the timing, I am really excited about it.  We probably won’t get pregnant the first time, but what if we do?  And by the end of the year we have a little baby? 

 

Luckily, I am not the kind of person that frames life with the thought “With my luck…” because with the way things have been going recently that would mean this experience will be really hard and end in some kind of surgery or huge standardized test.  I am also not a person that feels that past struggles guarantee there won’t be any in the future (“things have been so rough that I am sure conception will be easy”).  I don’t believe any outcome is owed to me because I have worked so hard, have struggled, or am especially deserving.  Plenty of people are deserving of all kinds of things that they never get.  I think I am pretty realistic and grounded, but also hopeful.  It may still be a long road to get to pregnancy, and we will get through it with love, tears, and laughter (at least a little).  But, then again, it may not be a long road at all–it may start on Monday.  And that is an amazingly wonderful, exciting thought.    

Okay so it begins slowly

We went in this morning – and well I still have no dominate follicles.   Our RE was nice, and she talked to us about clomid and doing a provera cycle.   She seemed to really understand that we wanted to get stuff started – and she was really aware that we were so sad when our first attempt ended in surgery.  We are going back in on Monday which will be day 22 to see if there is a egg in there that wants to be released.  The RE said that it did not look like I was going to ovulate over the weekend.

H. talked me down from sadness this morning on our walk back to the subway.  I think that in November my cycle was actually 35 days so I am hopeful that an egg will show up.   Also I would love to do one cycle without clomid.    So maybe this is a good thing and not weird.   I just always jump to my body is weird or abnormal now after that stupid, scary surgery.   (I think that I have some scars from that which are not visible.)    

and it begins

We went to the RE on we are cleared to start trying THIS cycle…. although it was day 15, on Monday when we went, I did not have any dominate follicles so we are going back tomorrow, which will be day 18. I have been having cycles that are 33 – 35 days long so I think this is perfect. 

I am nervous and excited – I can’t believe it is possible we are here.  H, is excited, I can tell because she has been researching baby things and yesterday when we were grocery shopping she wanted to get organic baby wash – not for her but for the baby… it was super cute.   Also, we ran into the RE at the store – I think that is a good sign – don’t you guys?   However, it was a bit weird, she is sort of cold and it felt like I saw my teacher outside of school, I had sort of forgotten that feeling. It was odd.

Tag you are it.

We were tagged by Lo and from catching up on all your blogs after coming back from vacation it seems it has gone around the block – but here are the rules:
1. Grab the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Open it to page 123.
3.Find the first 5 sentences and write them down.
4.Then invite 5 friends to do the same.

From the Time Out Paris Guide: To the west of l’Etoile, the extensive 16th arrondissement is the one that probably suffers the most from prejudices and preconceptions. This is an area of grandiose apartments and exclusive residences hidden down private roads, yet beyond its bourgeois respectability, it hides some seminal pieces of modernist architecture – and some of the city’s most important museums.

This was the nearest book to our computer…. We have it because we are dreaming of a trip to Europe. H. traveled around there after college and I have never been – even though I have a grandmother in England. I feel I must get to Europe soon – but with our baby plans and the dollar being so very weak we are putting it off. Sigh.

So that was a bit less then 5 sentences and I am going to tag any one who wants to do this Meme and K at I’m a mommy too