Infertility AND baby-related post

News about current pregnancy below!

I can't remember if I wrote about both my sister and my friend having problems with infertility.  My sister has been trying for over a year, my friend has been struggling with secondary infertility for over 3 years.  Both have had big news recently regarding their own struggles.

My sister went through two surgeries in the last 6 months to remove fibroids from her uterus.  After the second surgery, she requested an AMH test, since her last two showed declining numbers and she was concerned.  Her doctor went ahead and did the test, and discovered that she had low ovarian reserve and recommended egg or embryo donors.  She was crushed for a while.  At the time, I was newly pregnant and realized that I would not be able to donate eggs to her for over a year, assuming I am successful at breastfeeding this time around, so I felt pretty bad about the whole situation.  She finally made an appointment for a consultation at the clinic where I went to conceive my twins, and they told her that even though she may have diminished egg quantity, her egg quality should still be that of a normal 36-year-old (that is to say, not fantastic but not bad), and that she should be able to do IVF (if not just IUI) with her own eggs.  They're doing a clo.mid cycle just to learn how she'll react to the meds and gather information for future cycles.  So that's a relief, and I'm hopeful that they'll be on their way to having a baby within the next 6 months.

My friend has been through secondary infertility for at least 3 years.  She currently has a 5-year-old son and first told us about their problems a year and a half ago.  Until now, they had no diagnosis, and they've been doing medicated cycles at Ka.is.er (but not IUIs, except maybe the last one).  They finally decided to see fertility specialists, and in preparation for IVF, yesterday she had a hysteroscopy.  Her husband met us for dinner last night while she was at home resting and told us that the hysteroscopy found that she had extensive scarring in her uterus from the way the placenta detached after her first birth, and there was no way she could get pregnant or carry a pregnancy without surgery.  Apparently she'd even mentioned the difficulty she'd had delivering the placenta to several of the doctors she'd seen at K.ais.er, and she was blown off each time.  Needless to say, they're both angry at the wasted time and money, and all the treatments they've already done that never had any chance of working.  I'm heartbroken for what they've gone through, but hopeful that a relatively simple fix at this point will solve the problem.

And now, on to me.  I'm 14 weeks pregnant with a ... BOY!  I can't tell you how excited I am.  The whole family seems pretty on board now, and I'm just thrilled for the holiday season this year.  In fact, we have a ton of stuff going on from now until New Years really - my kids' first violin concert, music festivals, preschool graduation, a visit to my brother's family up in Washington, another potential trip to visit family in Italy, my kids' fifth birthday (!!!!), several camping trips in the works, starting kindergarten at our neighborhood school, fall (I LOVE fall!), Halloween, our new little one coming, then Thanksgiving and Christmas as a family of five.  I'm just so excited to have so much to look forward to right now.

My midwife suggested that instead of getting the gender results on the phone, I ask the nurse who calls to write it down and leave an envelope for me, so I went ahead and did that.  The problem was, my kids were home and playing nicely and I didn't want to interrupt them to drag them on a 10-minute trip to the doctor.  These are the times when I wish we had a "village" - maybe another neighbor at home who could run over for 10 minutes while I made a quick trip to the doctor, for example.  Alas, I don't have that, so I eventually promised them a smoothie or milkshake to get them into the car, then rushed to pick up the results.  Thankfully the envelope was sealed, so I wasn't tempted to open it before my husband got home.  I took the kids to their swimming lesson, then home to wait, and when my husband got home we all went and sat on a bench in the sunshine in our backyard, made our predictions, and opened the envelope.

Tadpole was immediately upset, mostly because in the previous few days she had decided she wanted to name our new baby girl "Stella" and now that name wouldn't be appropriate.  But she took the disappointment in stride and spent the next few days talking about "our new little boy".  Since the kids still lack any real concept of time, I kept explaining that the new baby wouldn't be born until around Halloween, which of course immediately made them demand certain Halloween costumes (which change every time we bring it up).  So Tadpole spent the next few days alternating between being panicked that we weren't ready for our new little boy (Oh NO!  We don't have any toys for him!  We don't have clothes for him!), to asking every day if he was born yet.  After about a week or so of that, she seems to have lost interest.

My plan right now is for the new little one to sleep in Tadpole's room, since her bed is currently in Turtle's room, and we have a futon in her room.  We can move the desk into the garage and set up the crib where Tadpole's crib used to be, and along with the futon and our beloved IKEA Poang chair, we'll have a pretty nice little nursery.  Longer term, Tadpole will move back into her room, the baby will move in with Turtle, and we'll bunk their beds, which will make plenty of room for their toys and other things.  Even longer term (or shorter term, if it comes to that), we'll combine our office and guest room and give one of those rooms to one of the kids.  A 5-year age difference might make room sharing hard, although I do have a friend whose daughters do it.

We could actually even bunk the beds sooner while Tadpole's still in there, just to make more space.  I'm just not sure how much of Tadpole's stuff to move out of her room, since she'll probably be keeping that room in the long term, but I do need to make some space for baby stuff.  I'm hoping to have a discussion with the kids in which we would all make the "decision" together to let the baby use Tadpole's room while he's little, and then Tadpole will get it back when he's older, but I am a bit nervous about being able to steer that conversation where I need it to go without causing any revolts or tears.

A friend told me about a resale group on Fa.ceb.ook in our town and I've already used it to buy almost everything we're going to need, all in excellent condition, at really good prices.  Between that, a few preschool sales, and friend donations, I've got a bouncer, a mini-cosleeper, a pea-pod sleeper (great for camping!), a carseat and matching jogging stroller, some great wooden toys, sleep sacks, hooded towels, an in-the-bed cosleeper, nursing cover, two nursing pillows, and probably a few other things I've forgotten.  I've still saved a high chair, crib with mattress and sheets, tricycle, some clothes (but not nearly enough), some toys and books, cloth diapers (which I think my friend has right now, I need to get them back), and the bicycle trailer.  I will definitely need a baby bathtub, a diaper bin, and more clothes, especially since this kid will be born in the fall and my twins were born in early summer, but I have a friend who has a little boy who will be two right around when my son will be born and is promising me some of his old clothes.  So that helps a lot.  I'm trying not to have to purchase almost anything new this time around.

I'm also already thinking about things like preschool, since I don't want to end up in a situation like we're in now, where I don't really like our school but my kids have made friends and I didn't ever want to upset the situation.  I think they're happy there, but I don't want to go back with our next kid  Now I know the importance of researching and enrolling early, and I have multiple ideas of where to look.

Well, this has gone on and on and ON, so I'll end it now and put you out of your misery.  I am trying to keep things in perspective and recognize that things are going to be HARD with two kindergarteners and a brand new baby, and in a few more years I'll be back to figuring out what I want to do with my life and my career, etc., but for the moment, I'm just overwhelmingly happy and joyous, and I really want to enjoy it while I can.

I guess it's time to announce that ... I'm pregnant.

13 weeks tomorrow.  And I had blood drawn for the Maternit-21 test almost two weeks ago, so I should know the gender pretty soon, too (and of course the results of the genetic testing, ahem).

I wrote a bunch of posts that I didn't publish just so I could get my feelings down on "paper", and they definitely show that I was wildly emotional for a while there.  I could publish them, I suppose.  We'll see.

In the meantime, now that the first trimester is at an end, and morning sickness has essentially called it a day, I'm telling everyone about the pregnancy.  I had my first midwife appointment today, and I'm actually pretty excited. It feels so strange to do this all the way a normal person would - not just because there was no infertility treatment involved, but because it's not twins!!!  I can't tell you how excited I am about the not twins part.

So, that's the announcement.  Wheeeeeee!  And whew.  The secret is out.

Our flight to Italy - the trip from hell

Well, we just arrived in Italy late last night.  It was a hell of a trip.  It's about a 1.5-hour drive to the San Francisco airport for us, and with slow traffic for much of the way it took us quite a bit longer.  Actually, back up to the morning - we were supposed to leave at 10:30 am.  My hubby decided Turtle should try to sleep without an overnight diaper the night before, and I was super skeptical, but stupidly didn't say anything.  Of course as luck had it, Turtle wet the bed.  So the morning of our flight, in addition to all the last-minute packing and cleaning and getting the house and the cat ready for our departure (I had to set the cat up to stay inside alone with a cat-sitter coming every other day to feed her), I also had three extra loads of laundry and a bed to strip and remake.  And hubby was working from home that morning, ending his last call right at 10:30.

Somehow we made it out of the house at 10:50, which was still plenty of time, even with the horrid traffic most of the way there.  Turtle complained about headaches and stomachaches, which he does often, so it was hard to know how serious he was being, but he didn't look great in the car and threw up as soon as we arrived at the off-site parking lot (thank goodness after he was already out of the car).  The shuttle took us to SFO, we checked in pretty quickly, passed security, grabbed a bite to eat, and got settled in at the gate, where the usual mess of people were pushing and shoving and jostling to be the first ones on the plane.  It drives me nuts.  I assume they want to be first to make sure they get a spot for their giant oversize carry-ons, but it still drives me nuts.

And there we were, plane boarded and ready to go for a 2:45 departure ... or so we thought.  HA.  HAHAHA.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

First, they announced that there was luggage on our flight that wasn't supposed to be there (????? how does that even happen?!), so we had a slight delay while they looked for the misplaced luggage in the cargo hold to remove it.  Then, suddenly, the plane lost power, which was really noticeable because the lights and AC switched off in the whole plane.  It immediately started to get hot and people were fanning themselves.  The captain came on the radio to tell us that we had lost the auxiliary power unit, which powered the plane while on the ground, but it wasn't necessary for flight and after a short delay we should be on our way.  A woman sitting near me had had enough - I had overheard her telling others that she was on a flight from Hawaii the day before that had to turn around for a medical emergency and she had missed her connecting flights and spent the night at SFO and was just done with it all.  So she left the plane.  Then we had to wait for them to find HER bag and get it off the plane.

In the meantime, apparently they did a more thorough investigation of the auxiliary power unit, and found that a vital engine fire extinguisher also was malfunctioning, which would require another 30 minutes, and we were invited to deplane if we wanted.  Tadpole and I decided to leave the plane, stretch our legs, and buy a few last-minute gifts we hadn't had time for earlier.  On our way back to the plane, we ran in hubby and Turtle, carrying all of our carry-ons - the plane had been delayed another hour, to 5pm, and they had forced everyone off.  We got coffee and snacks and went back to the gate to wait, starting to get a bit worried about missing our connection.  We only had 3 hours in Frankfurt, and we were leaving 2 hour and 15 minutes late at that point.  Still, I reasoned, we could get through the airport in 45 minutes, we'd probably make up some time on the way, and they'd probably hold our flight if they knew we were coming.

Ha.  HAHAHA.  While we were waiting for our new 4:30pm boarding time, another announcement - the captain and flight crew would be over hours and we needed to get a new crew and captain, so our flight would be delayed until 9pm.  4 more hours.  So much for our connection!  Everyone else had the same problem, and an insanely long line immediately formed at the gate for rebooking connecting flights.  Deciding there was plenty of time, I sat with the rest of the family to wait for a while before trying to get our connection rebooked.  In the meantime, I updated my sister on our situation and she asked why I didn't just call the customer service line - brilliant idea!  I called Lufthansa customer service (since we booked through them and our connecting flight was with them), and they got us rebooked in just a few minutes - they even booked us on two separate flights, one which we could probably make if our plane actually left at 9pm, and another later one just in case.  Whew!

So we had hours to kill - we went to try to get into United's lounge - no dice.  They sent us to customer service in the domestic terminal, where after some arguing and discussion, they gave us meal vouchers, and we had a quick dinner before heading back to the gate for our new 8:30 boarding time.  HA!  Hahahahahaha.

8:30 came and went.  At 9ish, they announced that they hadn't been able to get together a large enough crew, and we were still waiting on flight attendants.  Our departure gradually got pushed back to 10pm, and we finally boarded around 9:45.  I was still thinking in my head that maybe, just maybe, if we made up enough time, we'd still make the earlier connection in Frankfurt.  My husband continued to ask me why I was being so optimistic.  We once again sat on the plane wondering what the hell was going on - why weren't we getting ready to take off?  They made yet another announcement - more people had decided to bail on that flight, and they needed to find even more luggage from the cargo hold.  It took another hour.  We didn't take off until after 11pm.  By the time they served us dinner around 12:45 am, the kids were sound asleep.

For some reason they didn't tell people to close their windows as they usually do on these overnight flights, and I had a chair kicker behind me, so I only slept a few hours on the plane.  In addition I couldn't get the in-flight entertainment website to work on my laptop, and our headphone jacks didn't work so watching movies on the main screen was also not an option.  What an awesome flight it was turning out to be!  We also hit quite a bit of turbulence, although nobody paid any attention to the seatbelt sign.

About an hour from when I thought we should be landing (without an individual screen, I had no way of knowing exactly where we were), the flight attendants started serving breakfast.  I have done enough international flights to know that one hour out is not a whole lot of time to serve and then clean up after meal service for a full 747 and still prepare for landing, so I was a bit skeptical - maybe they were just providing those little breakfast boxes that they sometimes hand out quickly?  But no, they started a real meal service, including bringing our kids' meals first, which were pretty gross and our kids weren't too interested.  I could tell we were starting to descend; my ears were popping, and I could feel the pressure changes in my head.  I even told my hubby that it seemed strange they were just getting meal service started when it seemed like we were descending pretty quickly.  Indeed, they announced shortly after that that we would be on the ground in 12 minutes!!!  So they not only wouldn't have time to finish meal service, they would not be able to pick up the trays they had already handed out and we needed to store them under the seats in front of us.  What a mess!  We had a bumpy landing, which met with a loud round of applause from a plane full of people who were completely sick of being there and many of whom still had connection problems to fix.

In Frankfurt, my husband's phone wasn't working, but a nice Italian guy we met on the plane let him borrow his so he could call his father.  His dad hadn't gotten the email we sent explaining about the delays, so he had gone to the airport and had no idea what happened to us, since the airline wouldn't give him any information in the interest of privacy.  Poor guy ended up waiting in Turin from 2:30 until 10:30, since it wasn't worth the drive home by the time he figured out what had happened.

We had three hours to wait, and there were still lines everywhere from all the SFO people trying to get their new connecting flights, so we went to hang out in a quite area for a bit.  The area where we landed was basically deserted, all the stores closed, and not much to do, but it didn't make sense to go anywhere until we knew which gate our next flight would be at, and that wouldn't be available for a while.  We needed new boarding passes, but there was no rush.  So we just hung out, tried to entertain the kids, and my husband finally gave in to his churning stomach and went to vomit in the bathroom.  I still ended up waiting in line for a good half hour to get our boarding passes, then we had to rush to our gate.

Luckily, our last flight went smoothly, we arrived on time despite leaving late, and our luggage came quickly.  Finally, something that went smoothly.  We still had a 1.5-hour drive, which wouldn't get us home until after midnight, and we were SO TIRED at that point.  About 5 miles from my husband's town, we were winding our way up into the mountains on a dark, narrow, curvy mountain road when all of a sudden my husband shouted "Look out, look out!!!!!!!"  My father-in-law slammed on the brakes and swerved and we veered somewhat out of control around a huge landslide that had blocked most of the road.  A police car had arrived on the other side, but the slide was so huge that we couldn't see its flashing lights from the direction we were traveling.  Luckily, my father-in-law is a good (if extremely fast) driver, and managed to keep the car under control as we careened around the landslide, our hearts pounding.

We made it home, got the kids something to eat, and put them to bed, where they actually fell asleep pretty quickly.  Only to have Tadpole wake me up from a sound sleep 3 hours later, wide awake and ready to play.  Ugh.  I hate jetlag.  At least when the flight is over, no matter how awful it was, it's over.  Jetlag hangs on for days.

So here we are.  It's beautiful right now, I've never been here in spring.  The main road is closed for at least the weekend due to the landslide, but there is a secondary road that people are using.  I ended up sleeping all morning and would love to sleep more, but I know it's a bad idea.  We have the first of many big dinners tonight, at my husband's uncle's house, and a big family lunch or dinner tomorrow.  My husband and father-in-law took the kids skiing this afternoon while I unpacked my suitcase and went for a walk with my mother-in-law, and I'm just waiting for them to come back now.  I really should go unpack the kids' suitcase, as soon as I gather enough energy to get off the couch.

Future kindergarteners

I have spent hours today completing school registration forms for Turtle and Tadpole.  OMG, I had no idea that they would be this involved and complicated.  I'm still not sure I've done everything right, but I guess I will find out tomorrow at registration.

Our city has multiple special programs, including a Spanish immersion, a bilingual immersion, and a Montessori program, but we've decided after a lot of debate to just stick with our neighborhood school.  It's considered a very good school, it's centrally located near the community pool and the library, and it's an easy bike ride from our house.  Our kids don't need Spanish or bilingual immersion since we already speak Italian at home, and I wasn't that impressed by the Montessori program presentation last week.  Plus, it would make the kids dependent on me for transportation through the entire elementary school years, whereas here, they can ride by themselves to school as soon as I feel they can manage it safely.  Not to mention, I always see groups of kids riding to school together here, sometimes with just one parent herding whole groups of kids together (the biking version of a carpool, I guess!).  We live right across the street from the bike path that goes directly there without crossing any other streets, so it's incredibly safe.  And this way, they'll also be able to make friends within our neighborhood, which is a big plus as well.

So!  That's done.  Whew.

Back to life updates.  The kids are still doing violin, but really protesting practicing now, and I'm struggling to keep everyone motivated, including myself.  I don't know what to do.  I'd like to stick with it a little longer and hope they get more interested.  They really do like lessons, it's just the practice at home that I can't ever get to happen.

We went skiing two weekends ago, on a bit of a whim.  It was a blast.  The kids really love it.  I'm getting pretty excited to take them skiing in Italy with their grandparents.  We even went over jumps with them this last trip, which of course they loved.

I'm keeping really busy with work right now, my usual March madness combined with our upcoming trip has me just about over the edge, but I'm working pretty well on time management and I think things are pretty under control.  The house is suffering a bit, and I have lots of underlying things to finally get to, like decluttering, filing, etc., but I am actually working on that slowly here and there.  I still have lots of little things to do, and I think we'll be filing an extension for taxes, which is ok.  I can only do so many big projects at once.

That being said - it's time to get back to work.

Hey again

Hi again.  It's been 3 months since I last posted.  I had just run a marathon, one of my big goals in life.  Things got busy after that.  Christmas was insane this year, and I really hope to keep things more calm in future years.  My kids are in the midst of the gimme-gimme phase, and I'm having a hard time keeping things under control.  They don't appreciate the little things, and I ended up doing a lot of big things to make up for it, and it was just too much.

We spent New Years at Tahoe, which was tons of fun.  A bunch of friends of ours circulated in and out of the house we rented, and we spent the week teaching the kids to ski, which was a blast (if quite painful for our aching backs).  They've almost got it, but the terrible warm weather and lack of rain/snow (AGAIN) means we haven't been up to the mountains since.  To make up for that, we're going to Italy for a few weeks at the beginning of April, to spend what we hope will be a nice ski weekend in the Alps.

I started the kids in violin lessons in January, too, and they're doing great.  It's hard to get them to practice, and a TON of work to keep them motivated and creating games to make practicing more enticing, but it's paying off already.  It's amazing to see how quickly they learn at this age.  While I don't really care if they keep playing as they get older, I want to just give them a good foundation in music for so many reasons.  Even if they end up quitting, they'll keep so many of the benefits, and if they switch to another instrument, or voice, they'll have the basics already.

They start a higher level of soccer tomorrow, too.  We're all excited about that!  I don't know if we'll keep doing swimming this year, at least not as seriously as we did last year.  They can still swim (i.e. not sink/drown), and if they really enjoy it, I'm thrilled for them to keep it up, as swimming is one my favorite sports, but I don't want to push it.

And that's about it.  There's a lot more to talk about - my mom, my work, my hobbies, etc., but I have time.  I'll be posting more often, I hope, in the next little while.

Marathon!

I ran a marathon yesterday.  26.2 miles.  It was amazing and horrible at the same time.  It's sort of like having a baby, I guess, in that it's painful and messes up your body and afterwards you feel like you've done a major accomplishment and battled adversity and dug deep down and really proved yourself.

Anyway.  It was not 26.2 miles of pure hell, because the first half felt ok, but the second half was pretty miserable.  I couldn't have asked for better weather, so I should feel pretty lucky from that point of view.  I started the day by waking up at 4am to get out of the house by 4:20 to catch the shuttles from Sacramento to Folsom, which left at 5am.  The shuttles brought us to Folsom about 6am, and I hung out on the bus until 6:20 or so, waited in line for the bathroom for 25 minutes (!!!!) and barely had time to strip and drop off my bag of sweats before making it to the start line.

It was an amazing start, a beautiful sunrise, the national anthem (first time I've ever heard it at a road race), and a nice downhill run for the first half mile.  I was actually stiff and felt like I had shin splints for the first two miles, so I was really starting to worry, but then I loosened up and the first half felt pretty good.  As per my last few half marathons, I started feeling the strain around mile 10, and after mile 13, things started aching.  By mile 16, I was slowing down, and by mile 20, I was feeling pretty beaten up.

The last 6 miles rival many of the hardest things I've done in my life, not least giving birth.  My hips were aching, my muscles felt like they were about to give out, my feet were killing me from pounding the pavement.  I was walking on and off, more than I had expected, and my pace slowed considerably.  People were falling apart around me.  One person was on her cell phone, crying.  The buses that shuttled us to the start came by slowly once in a while, I assume to pick up anyone who was giving up, and I can't tell you how tempting it was to stop running and climb on one.  What kept me going was the thought of my family and friends at the finish line, who had come out to cheer for me.  I couldn't let them down.

I thought the last couple miles, running through downtown Sacramento, I would feel the adrenaline and pick up the pace, but it didn't really happen until the last half mile.  Seeing my husband and kids, my sister and brother-in-law, and my friends waiting a few blocks before the finish line was the best feeling in the world, and gave me so much energy to push that last stretch!  The official race photographers at the finish line helped, too =)

So!  I did it!  One of my major goals, done!  And quite possibly I will never do it again, but I learned a lot about myself, and I'm proud of myself, and I'm so happy to be done with demanding training schedule and get those hours of my life back again.  I'm already thinking of next steps in terms of staying in shape and active, but for now, I'm going to relax and enjoy the holidays.

I am not, by nature, very zen

So.  Here I am.  Trying to be zen.  Ha!  That's funny.

I got my IUD out on October 30th.  The doctor wasn't very nice.  I don't like her.  But it went just fine, it wasn't painful at all, and it was done!  Yay!  I asked if I might have spotting, and she said I might experience some withdrawal bleeding.  THAT was an understatement.  I essentially had a period.  A pretty heavy period, for five full days.  And that was what would have been day 18 of my cycle.  Since I'm now on day 29, with no AF in sight, I'm not really sure where I am in my cycle, when to expect AF, or how that withdrawal bleeding affected my cycle.  Weird.  Maybe I should try some OPKs?  I don't really want to get into all that again ... not sure what to do.

Things are crappy with my mom.  Surprise!  As usual, I'm not sure what to do about THAT, either.

My kids got their 4-year immunizations a couple weeks ago, and haven't wanted to take off the band-aids, so I let them keep them.  I didn't think there was really any harm, but I was surprised by how long they lasted.  One of Turtle's detached on one side, and I noticed that the skin was really red where the adhesive had been.  I had to bribe them to get them to let me pull them off, and poor little boy, he clearly has sensitive skin.  He has bright red irritated spots on both arms where the band-aids were.  I feel so bad, but he says it doesn't hurt.

And that's it, really.  I like the holidays (except for dealing with my mom), and it's getting cold and even raining.  I'm looking forward to cooking Thanksgiving dinner, several Christmas parties, and skiing for New Years.  Life is really looking very good.

But if you happen to have any advice for the mirena, I'd greatly appreciate it!