Neither Trying Nor Preventing

Apparently, such a strategy can have the following consequences:

(Apologies for the awful picture.) The first one strip was last Tuesday.

Since my period has been irregular since Harry was born because of the whole nursing thing, I have no idea when I ovulated, but if I had to guess I would have thought it was several (like 4-5) days after the last time we actually did the deed, so this is a huge surprise to say the least. That first strip is rather faint, which would be consistent with it being about 14dpo. If there's any validity to the Shettles Method, I'm guessing this will be a girl, if in fact we get that far.

Strangely, I'm not feeling as nervous or anxious as I would expect. Or, to the extent I'm feeling nervous/anxious, it's more over the idea of possibly having two under two or of having to manage a career and two small kids or of having to tell my dad, who I suspect will feel that the latter is impossible, or at least that my work will be less than thrilled, thereby derailing my career further.

For now, I will attempt to be excited. And for now, we will keep this a serious secret. And for now, I am going to save this post as a draft, to be published later.

Update on the Last Post

They retrieved 9 eggs on Tuesday, of which 4 fertilized. She is pretty upset, as they got 16 last time, of which 11 fertilized. (Of course, last time her transfer got cancelled due to OHSS.) Transfer is scheduled for Friday. My fingers remain crossed for them. Keep yours crossed too.

Fingers Crossed

Harry's godparents have been trying to conceive for three or so years now. The day I had the D&E back in 2007, she had an HSG that showed that her tubes were blocked. Completely. In the two years since then, we had Harry, who is now one. In that same two year period, they fought a series of battles with their insurance company. She had a bilateral salpingectomy. They began their first of two covered rounds of IVF, but she showed signs of OHSS post-retrieval, so the transfer was cancelled. They did two FETs, neither successful. They did a lot of thinking and a lot of waiting.

Last night at two a.m was her trigger shot for their second-and-final insurance-covered fresh cycle. Retrieval is tomorrow at two. Transfer will be Friday or Saturday, barring any recurrence of the OHSS signs.

Shit has not been going particularly well for them in general lately. She is finishing her dissertation and trying to enter the job market. This is tough at any time, but the economy sucks, and her research findings and her hypotheses aren't lining up completely, and she's a perfectionist (I say that in the best way, of course), so she's stressed. And, well, rather hormonal. Meanwhile, his company first cut salaries, then furloughed people, including him. So they can't afford a fresh cycle on their own dime. This may be it for them for now.

I'm guessing they don't need any advice per se, but if anyone has any prayers/positive thoughts to spare and/or has any words of any sort, whether they be of comfort or encouragement or other forms of wisdom, I'd be happy to pass them along.

One Year

My wonderful little boy,

It seems wholly impossible that it has been a year since you came into our lives. As cliched as it is, it feels like just yesterday that you were born, but I can't really remember our life without you. In that year you have gone from being a helpless newborn to being a fiercely determined, rambunctious little boy. I have loved every minute of being your mom, even the minutes where you bit hard enough to draw blood or screamed for no reason or threw all your food on the floor for the dog. Every. Minute. They have been the best 525,600 minutes of my life.

This month has been full of fun. You rediscovered books -- and remembered that they are not just for eating. You love to flip the pages and look at the pictures. You love your big picture books and Beep Beep Peekaboo and Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy. You also love Alligator Alphabet, requesting it be read MANY TIMES after almost every nap -- you see the painting on the wall and want to touch the animals (mainly the yak and the zebra), so we read the book instead. Unsurprisingly, your first word was book. And even less surprisingly, your second was dog. You continue to be slightly obsessed with the dog.

You are also really into your walking toys. You love walking, but you can't quite do it on your own yet, so you spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time pushing your truck across the room, walking around it to get to the other side, then pushing it back. It was a happy day in our house when you discovered that you could walk to the other side to push it back, ending the days of sitting down and crying. You also enjoy walking the truck to the airplane, and the airplane to the giraffe, or any of them to a piece of furniture that you can cruise along to get to the next thing, whether it be another walking toy, another piece of furniture, the exersaucer (you love being able to walk around it and check out the toys from the outside), your music table, or your workbench. I think you have too many toys.


This month you also took your first step, down at Grandma Ps beach house, where we spent Labor Day with Papa and Grandma P and your cousins and your uncles and aunt. I don't think the step was on purpose -- you let go, took one step, and fell down -- but you did do it. While there, you also took your first dip in the Atlantic. It was definitely more successful than the Pacific. You liked it so much that, when we were sitting on the beach, you took my hands and walked me back down to the water to go back in, wading in up to your chest and laughing away. I am so glad you have decided you like the water. Now that you bathe in the big boy bathtub and spent time in a pool both at our house and at daycare, maybe it seems more familiar. Or maybe you just knew that this was your ocean. I'm happy either way.

I'm sorry that you had to wake up in the morning on your first birthday in a pack n play in a hotel room, but daddy's cousin got married and we had to go. You did get to celebrate with a belgian waffle, followed by your first haircut (it was getting a bit shaggy around the ears), thanks to Grandma. We spent the evening at Fenway Park, where you got to see your name on the scoreboard, along with birthday wishes from your dad and me. You also got to see the Red Sox win for the sixth time this year -- this time from excellent seats on the first base line. You held up a sign telling everyone it was your birthday, which everyone in our section loved but no one on TV saw. You were on TV, though -- in the background for every left-handed batter but not with the sign. We'll save it -- you have a lot of birthdays ahead of you.

My sweetpea, my munchkin, my big guy, my baby boy. I love you with all my heart, on this, your first birthday, and for every day before and every day yet to come.

Mommy

Time for a Change?

Over the years, when recruiters have called, I have always just said I wasn't looking.

Today, I told one to call back in a few weeks. I need some time to gather my thoughts.

Table Food = Messy

First pizza, al fresco at Uno's (we forgot a bib, so Uno's offered us a disposable apron, which was essentially a trash bag, cut to cover Harry's whole torso):

Macaroni with sweet potato mush sauce:

Blueberry pancakes:

Pasta with red sauce (I can't look at this picture without laughing):

Anniversary, Apathy, Exhaustion: Catching Up

So I have had a bunch of posts that I've meant to, well, post, but haven't had time. So, in order to catch up, I'm just going to do a bulleted list of stuff, starting with the good and moving to the less good:

• P and I celebrated our four year anniversary last week (the 20th). Four years is the fruit & flowers (traditional) or appliances (modern) anniversary. So P sent me flowers and gave me a new air conditioner for our room (we had given ours to Harry). I sent him an edible arrangement (with the anniversary sampler added on) and got him a second guitar for Guitar Hero. Very romantic :) On Saturday, my SIL babysat, and P and I enjoyed a fantastic dinner out, then went to see Harry Potter at the IMAX. It was an awesome night -- wonderful meal, great movie, better company. Happy anniversary, P!
• Harry has begun table food in earnest. We have ordered him food off the kids menu at a couple of restaurants. It has been quite messy but fun. It seems he will eat anything with tomato sauce. And he loves blueberry pancakes.
• I find myself somewhat busy at work. I've been having a lot of trouble motivating lately (see next bullet), though, which isn't good. I have a lot more to say on this, but it's not really a bullet list kind of thing.
• Lately (like, since June), I've been feeling, well, not myself. I guess that's the best way to describe it. I've been feeling tired and run down and generally apathetic. I just don't care about much of anything. Most of the time, whatever I'm doing, I'd rather be doing something else. And beyond apathy, I am definitely feeling some degree of antipathy when it comes to work. I have waves of feeling differently, but they are infrequent and unpredictable. And I have been eating too much, in a very mindless way, and not healthy food, which makes me feel more run down and generally bad about myself. I had an appointment with my doctor last week (for a physical) and brought it up with her. She did a bunch of bloodwork to rule out any physical causes, and it all came back normal. Her best guess (and mine, I suppose) is depression. She recommended an anti-depressant. But the last time I tried one (in college), I had a very bad reaction to it (severe anxiety -- severe enough to land me in health services, where they doped me up on a boatload of sedatives). So I'm reluctant.
• My tiredness/run down-ness is not being helped by the fact that Harry has gone from being a great sleeper to being a mediocre (at best) one. After sleeping through the night since 10 weeks, we have now had several weeks of wake-ups. Some wake-ups are quick, others not so much. And he pulls himself to standing and will wail on and on, so we can't really just let him cry it out, though we may try some modified form of it tonight in the hope of finding something, anything, that might help. For an example of what we've been dealing with, on Tuesday I was working until about 1am. I then couldn't sleep. I finally fell asleep at 2 or so Within 5 minutes, Harry woke up screaming. When I went in there, his elbow was stuck in the bars of the crib (his actual elbow -- his hand and body were still inside, but his elbow was outside). I unstuck it and rubbed his back for a bit. He lifted his head up (which is generally an indication that he's about to sit, then stand), so I picked him up to settle him, but he was like a sack of potatoes. I put him back down a minute later. He moved around a little and fell back to sleep. This was one of the better nights. But I then had trouble getting back to sleep. So last night I decided to go to bed early-ish (10:30 or so), since I'd only slept 3 hours the night before. But Harry didn't like that plan. He woke up at 10:45, screaming. We let it go for a few minutes, but it got worse rather than better. P went in to rock him, but Harry continued to scream/cry for an hour or more, preventing me from sleeping. He finally calmed down, but wasn't sleepy. At 12:15, I took over, and after 15 minutes he was asleep. But he woke up when I tried to leave. By that point I was too tired to deal, so I turned off the monitor so I could sleep and let P take over again. Harry didn't fall asleep until 1:15. During the time he was awake, we tried Motrin and Orajel, in case it was teething. P gave him a bottle, in case it was hunger. He had a few farts, but not enough for me to think it was gas. He's pooped a bunch lately, so it's not constipation (though the poops have been wetter than usual, but not so wet as to make me worry about a bug). P thinks it's developmental, relating to an approaching language development, since he tends to spend his settled-but-not-sleepy time "talking." (He says "duck" and "book" (and other things, but mainly those two) over and over, pointing at any number of things, most of which are neither ducks nor books.) I'm nearing a breaking point.

And that's all I have to say about those things for now. Advice and/or assvice on any of those topics is welcome.

Eleven Months

Dear Harry,

It seems completely unreal to me that you are eleven months old, only one month shy of a full year. More accurately, it seems unreal to me in the abstract that you are eleven months old, but, when I look at you and see the little boy you have become and think back to the baby you were, it seems very real. Because you have become a little boy.

After many months of frustration on your part, you finally figured out crawling this month. Your style is a little funny -- you use your hands, one knee and one foot. It looks funny, but you're quite quick. And within two weeks of figuring that out, you had mastered getting to sitting, pulling to standing and cruising. You love the new-found mobility and freedom. And you get into everything, seemingly drawn to the things that are least appropriate, more drawn the more we try to keep you away. You love the dog's bones, and his food, and the bottles in the wine rack. In a room full of your toys, with a dog bone tucked away in a corner, you will somehow sense the bone and make a beeline for it, getting it into your mouth before we've realized that you've taken off.

You made your first trip up to the cottage this year. We did the drive overnight in both directions to ensure that you slept, which, of course, ensured that we did not. The weather wasn't great -- rainy, overcast, cool enough that you needed footie jammies and more pants than we brought -- but we made our best of it. Daddy and Grandpa made you a beach, which makes them pretty awesome. You went out on the boat, sat in the water (though you did not like to go swimming, which makes Mommy a little sad) and played in the sand. You got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa and Great-Grandpa, as well as your cousin B.



You also visited the place in Maine where Mommy's family has gone for 57 years. You are now the fifth generation to have been up there. I wish we could have been there for longer than a weekend. Maybe next year. Maybe by then you'll be ready to try sailing!

After eight months of being a pretty great sleeper, with all the new stuff, you started to have a harder time sleeping. It started when we were on vacation, but continued on and off when we got home, so maybe it wasn't just that you hated the borrowed pack n play. When we put you down, or when you wake up at night, you push yourself to sitting and begin to cry. With some regularity, you have begun to require rocking and/or singing in order to fall asleep, which is exhausting, especially in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if your brain and/or body is on overdrive, or if you're teething, or if we've been feeding you something that is bothering you, but I hope you go back to sleeping well soon.

You have also had a lot to say this month. You still don't have any words, or at least no words that Daddy and I can recognize, but you certainly spend a lot of time talking, often quite loudly. You are not a quiet child. I think you get this from Mommy's family. You also figured out this month that your toy crates had toys in them. It was pretty funny to watch. Of course, once you knew where we had hidden it, you immediately took that dang butterfly back out, putting it and it's tremendously annoying songs back into circulation. We had enjoyed the reprieve.


It has been truly wonderful getting to watch you grow and learn and explore this past month. Now if we could just work on the sleeping thing...

With all my love,

Mommy

Wordless Wednesday: Stop Raining -- It's Vacation and We Want To Play Outside

What A Difference Two Weeks Makes

In the past two weeks, Harry has:

• mastered crawling (though on hands, one knee and the other foot)
  
• mastered getting himself seated
  
• mastered pulling up on stuff
  
• begun cruising
• (as a result of those four items, he now requires rocking to sleep at least 75% of the time or he wails and wails until we go in and find him sitting up in his crib crying, holding his arms out to be picked back up)
• (also as a result of those four items, he now requires singing in order to have his diaper changed or he either crawls off or cries if you try to prevent the crawling through some form of baby-wrangling)
• mastered walking while holding on to hands (purposeful, quick walking as opposed to thudding, haphazard steps, which he started a while back). He is also able to sit back down and to let go with one hand to bend over and pick up a toy (or piece of lint or old food).
  
• been to his second foreign country -- he has now been to more non-U.S. countries than his aunt and uncle combined
• pulled his first all-nighter (well, up from 11:30 on -- he did sleep 3.5 hours to start the night)
• begun nursing strike number 2 (which I am now fairly confident is stemming from the return of my monthly cycle. Each strike has begun in the week and a half leading up to a (one-day) period, with the last one ending the day the period began/occurred. If that's the case again, I can live with it. My supply seems to nosedive during that week+ (or I stop responding to the pump) and it takes ages to get a letdown then, so I think he's impatient. At least the biting is less bad this time. Mainly he just gives up. Though he gave me the worst bite yet last week, bad enough that I ached for days afterward.)
• been on his first boat ride
• gone swimming in a lake
• learned how to throw tennis balls for the dog
• taken his first bath in the big tub
• begun waving

I am exhausted. (The fact that the aforementioned all-nighter was two nights ago, and last night we drove all night on our way back from vacation so as to avoid ten hours in the car with him awake is partly to blame for that.)

This unwilling-to-go-down-easily-or-have-a-diaper-change thing ends at some point, right?