...as good as it gets?

away

2010-10-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've been away so long. This blog was about my infertility journey, and that chapter of my life is closed, so I don't really plan on coming back here.

I have two beautiful baby girls. They were born via scheduled c-section at exactly 38 weeks on July 7th, 2010. They were both breech, so the c-section was our only option. Baby A - Sarah Elizabeth - was 6 pounds 8 ounces, 19 inches long. Baby B - Julianne Carol - was 7 pounds 11 ounces, 20 inches long. A lot of baby! Even my OB was shocked at their sizes - no wonder I was so huge and uncomfortable, especially the last few weeks. They were both very healthy.

The last few months has been a blur - 4 babies in the house is crazy. Danny and Callie have handled their new sisters like champs - they love the babies and they are very gentle and sweet with them. The babies are a little more challenging than Danny and Callie were, we've dealt with Lactose Intolerance, dairy sensitivity, and now reflux. Overall it's not bad, but we knew that we were spoiled with how easy C & D were as babies, so some days we feel like we are figuring it out all over again. But they are beautiful, and they get more beautiful every day.

If anyone is still checking here... you can now find me at my family blog - jimandorlisa.blogspot.com. These days that blog is mostly populated with pictures of the kids. I also don't check the email associated with this blog very often, so if you want to reach me just leave a comment on the other blog with your email address (comments are hidden, so noone else will see your email). And I'm on facebook too - also leave me a comment on the family blog if you want to know how to find me there.

Life on the other side of infertility is interesting. You're never really on the other side of it. You never recover from the scars. I will never stop thinking about the pain that I went through, and there will always be a little part of me that will wish that I could get pregnant naturally. Honestly I would love to have more kids, I love being a mom. But 4 is enough really, I can't afford the help that would be required to manage more than 4. And anyway, the well is dry. My egg source has her own life now, a husband and child of her own, and I wouldn't ask her to do for me again what she did once.

I still wonder about the embryos that didn't make it. I will always wonder who those babies might have become. And secretly, late at night, when I'm holding one of my little babies, I whisper into their ears about all the little angel brothers and sisters they have in heaven looking over them. There were so many. There are little parts of me that still think that something I did caused those babies not to live, something wrong with my body caused them to not implant and grow and live the lives they were meant to live. There will always be a little guilt about that. But, on the other hand, if we had frozen embryos left now then I would be conflicted about what to do with them. I would want them.

signing out for now....

me again

2010-02-03T21:24:00.001-08:00

Time flies.

I'm 16 weeks now, and finally actually feeling pretty good most of the time. The nausea is mostly gone, I still get occasional waves, but it's pretty seldom and considerably milder than before - so really nothing to even worry about.

I'm still having issues sleeping, but nowhere near as bad as it was even a few weeks ago. I had many nights when I was literally wide awake all night - which seems crazy given how exhausted I was all day. This went on for weeks and weeks and nothing helped - I tried benadryl, and my doc even prescribed a.mbien - it didn't touch it. But - not sure if it was just a timing coincidence or what - I think I started to realize that when I didn't take my prenatal vitamin at night, I slept a little better. I have been taking my vitamins in the evening for a while now, because they just seemed to go down better on a full stomach. But it never occurred to me that they might affect my sleep. So - as I said - it could be something, or it could be just the timing that I was already entering the 2nd trimester where a lot of these problems go away anyway. who knows. I'm still not sleeping all night, but I'm not laying wide awake for hours and hours, which is so much better.

That whole first trimester gross-ness doesn't really make you feel pregnant. You just feel gross. Now I am starting to feel pregnant - I'm definitely starting to show, and feeling like there's something in there. I think I'm also starting to feel some of that spreading/pressure on the pelvic bone - I think this is a lot earlier than last time, but I guess that makes sense. I'm not yet feeling any real movement, still just that faint tickling, flickering sort of sensation that you sometimes hear about - a little like gas, but faster and lower and more frequent.

We've had a few good looks at the babies, and they are doing great. Both right about the same size, growing right on track. The nuchal measurements were great, so we're not moving forward with any other screenings. We will have the anatomy scan in a few weeks, I need to get that scheduled.

My kids have decided that now would be a good time to start to have some sleeping issues. They both have been taking turns being sick for the last few weeks - our entire household, including the nanny, have been trading colds around. So we've had quite a few nights of sneezing, coughing, waking up just being generally miserable, etc. Fortunately for me, my husband has taken most of the brunt of this night time stuff - voluntarily. He wanted me to be able to get some rest. But I think that is coming to an end. He has turned into a total whiner about not getting enough sleep, and I'm getting so sick of hearing about it that I'd rather just get up in the night and let him sleep. seriously! I'm not sure what he thinks he's going to do when these babies are born - he is getting TONS of sleep now compared to what he will be getting in a few months, so it seems to me like it would be wise to not complain about it now. I'm not sure what has gotten in to him.

Having sick kids is no fun - especially when there is so little you can do to help them feel better, or even help them understand why they feel so bad. It's sad. We're definitely noticing the impact of having them in preschool and being exposed to the germs. But I really have a hard time with how many parents bring their kids to school when they are obviously sick and contagious. Especially our school - we are in a developmental preschool at a clinic where there are lots of kids with health problems and special needs - and still these people think nothing of bringing a kid who is coughing like crazy or has green snot running out their nose. It really makes me angry. And it's not because the parents have to work and have no place else to send their kid - this is a program that requires the parent to be present. I sat across the table at snack time last week from a kid with green snot running down his face, and his clueless mother was sitting right next to him doing nothing about it, until I mentioned that he needed his nose wiped. What is wrong with these people? I really love the place otherwise, Danny has done amazing there and has made HUGE progress. And I know this goes on everywhere, I just would have expected that parents in this kind of environment would be a little more considerate.

We have started to spread our news a bit more broadly - the preschool teachers and Danny's therapists all know now. And a few more friends. We still haven't told anyone we work with, although I am going to have to do that in the next week I think. I am running out of clothes to wear. I pretty much only fit in materity clothes now. I have a few baggy sweaters that somewhat hide things if I'm layerd with a cardigan, hold my coat in front of me or make sure I get to meetings early so I'm sitting when others arrive. Last time I was able to get away with it until around 20 weeks, but this time I started off much thinner, and I think it's true what they say about showing earlier with a second pregnancy. But I can't get away with it for much longer. I was holding off because I was trying to get a consulting contract locked in through June. I didn't want any knowledge of the pregnancy to influence any decisions about extending my contract. I mostly work from home, so I fully expect to be able to keep working until the end of June (or close to it). That would be basically the same timing as last time, and I have no reason to think this pregnancy will be any shorter. I had absolutely no complications or pre-term labor last time, no dilation, nothing - so my OB feels fairly confident that I will go pretty far again. Of course, anything could happen, but I need to move forward assuming it won't, and I'll deal with any complications if they arise. I feel a little bad keeping this secret, but it really isn't relevant to my job, so technically (and legally) it shouldn't matter. I think I've now got my contract secured through June, so I will probably break the news next week.

ok, that was long and rambling enough, but now we are somewhat caught up to speed.

disappeared

2010-01-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

Oh I have become one of those slacking bloggers - disappearing for months at a time.

Everything is fine, I'm 13.5 weeks now (will be 14 weeks on wednesday). We've had a few great ultrasounds and the babies are growing right on track, very busy, and looking very healthy so far.

I have been miserable, thus my excuse for not keeping up. It seems worse than last time - although maybe that's my bad memory. Or maybe being a few years older makes it harder, and probably the fact that I am not able to get in a 3 hour nap every day like I last time makes a difference too. The last few months have been filled with nausea, gas, bloating, nausea, headaches, lightheadedness, very severe insomnia, exhaustion, bad taste in my mouth and more nausea. I got a cold at thanksgiving that lasted for weeks and weeks and weeks, I think my body didn't have the strength to fight it very well. I've been managing to do the bare minimum to keep the family fed and clothed and stay employed. Beyond that, nothing has been accomplished, my house is disorganized and my to-do list is a mile long. Thank goodness for my amazing husband who has been doing everything he can around here, and taking care of the kids all weekend while I lay on the couch and moan.

But, I am finally starting to come out of the fog. I'm still not quite feeling that great second trimester energy you sometimes hear about, but I am feeling human again.

I will try to be back soon and write more of an update. But I at least wanted to send out word that I am still alive and doing ok.

Oh, and I deleted my twitter account. I kept seeing people add me, but I never update it any more.

here we go again

2009-12-01T16:50:00.000-08:00

Ultrasound today - it's twins again! We weren't all that suprised, given the super high beta and the fact that I've been feeling exactly as awful as I did when I was pg with the twins.

So here we go again! We waffle back and forth between a combination of excitement and "oh my god what have we gotten ourselves into". But mostly very excited. I'd be more excited if I didn't feel so crummy, but I'll feel better in a couple months.

must rest now.

again with the waiting

2009-11-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone for all your wonderful comments of support and congrats. I don't know what I would do if I hadn't found this wonderful virtual IF community - what a wonderful thing the internet is. You all make IF just a little bit easier to bear, and you help make the successes a little more sweet. so thank you.

I don't have much in the way of updates. We have a scan scheduled for Tuesday, Dec 1. I'll be 6 weeks and 6 days. They offered to do one next week, but we'll be out of town. I asked if we could do it before we leave but they said that would be too early. So it's booked for the day after we get home.

We're flying to San Diego on Saturday to spend the week with my family for thanksgiving. We will be telling my mom & stepdad and my sister & brother-in-law at dinnner on Saturday night. Those of you who have been reading here for a while will recall that these embryos were the result of donor eggs from my sister - so I am very exicted to be able to tell her of this pregnancy in person.

This second 2ww is almost as hard as the first. But fortunately I have this vacation to break it up, and am busy this week getting everyone packed and ready for the trip. I've been having a terrible time keeping my brain focused on work - which is not very good because I do consulting work, so I need to put in the hours in order to get paid. I have to figure out a way to get focused.

I have been 'graduated' early by my acupuncturist. I saw her yesterday and she said that they usually like to see people through their first trimester, but my numbers are so high that she really doesn't think it's necessary. So she sent me off with a whole packet of info - eastern medicine guidelines and recommendations about pregnancy, and told me to call if I have any complications, and to come back in the third trimester for birth preparation. If any of you are considering acupuncture and/or chinese medicine for infertility, I highly recommend it. I really believe it made a difference in my last cycle.

I have very little symptoms so far - some mild breast tenderness, maybe some blue veins showing up in my arms and chest, and some very mild queasyness. All things that I probably wouldn't notice if I wasn't looking so closely for them. But I expect this to change within the next couple of weeks. Last time I think it was around 6 weeks that I started feeling pretty crummy.

I've been thinking a lot about the little superstitions that we all have during our IF treatments. With every little move I make I'm afraid I might jinx something. With my first FET transfer I wore the necklace I had worn when I got pg with the twins. But that FET failed, so this last time I made sure to wear a different necklace - a new one that my hubby had given me for my birthday. I bought a few items of maternity clothing, because the weather has turned here and I have no winter clothes that fit (yes, I gained a bit of weight this last cycle). It seemed silly to buy regular winter clothes that won't fit for very long, so I bought a few maternity things. They are little big, but so much more comfortable than squeezing into pants that are too tight. And it's so nice that the now make maternity pants that don't look like maternity pants - with a 'real waste'. But I'm terrified that I'll jinx myself by doing so, and by talking about it.

That's all for now - not sure how much I'll be posting for the next week or so, as I'll be busy with family. But check back on December 1 for the news about the first ultrasound. I think it will be exciting.

third beta

2009-11-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

third beta is 4898. Approximately a 39 hour doubling time again. :-)

Second beta

2009-11-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

The second beta is 2162!

That is a doubling time of 39 hours. With my twins, my second beta had a doubling time of 45 hours - so this is even stronger.

We're feeling pretty confident that we've got a nice healthy pregnancy here! yeah!

One more on monday.

catching our breath

2009-11-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

Wow, we're still blown away by that beta number yesterday. I was not expecting that. I had already heard that betas from FETs were lower than fresh cycles, because the frozen embryos take a little longer to get going. But I guess not in this case. The funny thing about those home pregnancy tests is - I thought those lines were kind of light. I was expecting a somewhat low beta. But in all my years of trying to get pregnant, I've never actually seen a positive HPT. The one successful cycle I've had (with the twins), I didn't POAS. So I guess I didn't really know what a strong line looked like.

Thanks to everyone for all your comments. It's so nice to see how many of you are still reading here.

The answer to several of your questions is yes - we did want twins again. We would never have transferred two embryos if we weren't very ok with the idea of having a second set of twins. I don't think anyone should ever transfer more than one embryo if you're not very comfortable with the idea of having multiples - because you never know what could happen.

My first beta at 15 dpo with the twins was 638. I thought that was extremely high and I was afraid that maybe one had split and we were going to have more than two. But it turned out to be two, which we were thrilled about.

And actually I'm not sure if this one counts as 15dpo or 16dpo, because I can't remember if my clinic freezes the blasts on day 5 or day 6. If these were actually 6-day old embryos, then this beta is probably pretty close to where I was with my twins at 16 dpo, maybe a little lower.

My second beta is tomorrow. With my twins the second beta was 1935. So I'm very curious to see where this one will be tomorrow. I don't think we did a third beta that time.

I have a third beta scheduled for monday. And they already had me schedule a first ultrasound. It would have been two weeks from today, but we're going to be out of town, so it will be tuesday Dec 1. I will be 6 weeks and 6 days then. That's the exact same point as when I had my first u/s the last time. I hope I don't jinx anything by going ahead and scheduling that.

back tomorrow with another number.

oh dear.

2009-11-12T11:19:00.001-08:00

beta is 905.

have you ever heard of such a thing?

now for the nail biting...

2009-11-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

Blood is drawn. I should have the beta results in a couple hours.

I did another HTP this morning (because once you've done one, then why the hell not!). I think it was relatively the same - it didn't get any darker than the one yesterday, actually it's a bit lighter, but even the control line is lighter so I'm just chalking that up to a difference in the tests. But I do think that it turned positive faster, it actually starting showing up almost instantly.

I'm trying not to chew all my nails off while I wait for the phone call.

I wasn't going to. But....

2009-11-11T08:53:00.000-08:00

I don't think this means I'm totally out of the woods yet. I think the positive beta I had last time would have turned an HTP positive as well, and that beta went down. So I won't feel better until I a nice strong first beta, and a very good rising second beta.

But I have reason to hope. yeah!

feeling low

2009-11-10T13:39:00.000-08:00

ooh, I hate this feeling.

Two days to go, and I'm not feeling optimistic. I have no symptoms. Every time I have been pregnant (three total - once for about a week, once for about 9 weeks, and once for 9 months), I have had early symptoms - sore boobs, nausea, etc. Every time I haven't had symptoms, I haven't been pregnant. So I'm not feeling super positive about this cycle any more.

I have no reason for why it may not have worked - once again, everything should have been 'perfect'. But the little voice inside is telling me that if it had worked I'd be feeling something right now.

So what I'm feeling is depressed.

all's well, except the waiting

2009-11-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

The transfer on monday was as perfect as it could be. The two embryos were both already hatching and looked very healthy. To my untrained eye, they actually looked better than the ones from the last two FETs. The embryologist was very optimistic and excited. We had the A-team for the transfer. My RE normally doesn't work on Monday, but she came in just for us because she knew I wouldn't want one of the other docs to do it, and she got her best u/s tech, and we had the head embryologist. He's the same one we had when we get the transfer that got us the twins, but we had not seen him for the last two transfers.

So, all the stars have aligned, everything has so far gone in our favor. I've done my acupuncture, taking my PIO, I had two very mellow days with my feet up, I've been eating my pineapple - I think I've covered all my bases.

Now just to wait. Beta is a week from tomorrow. I do not plan on testing. Hopefully the wait won't be too awful because I will be busy - I picked up a new consulting project that is keeping me busy at work, and I'll have my hands full with the kids all weekend. So the time should go by fast. I hope. Usually how this goes is that about the first half I do ok, and the last several days I start to lose my mind just a little bit. So we'll see.

I was nervous before this transfer. Way more nervous than I've ever been before. I feel like we have so much riding on this one - this is it, no more embryos. If this doesn't work then we are completely back to square one and I don't know what we'll do.

This has to work. it has to.

we're on

2009-10-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

The day 12 check was perfect - better than I've had before on day 12. Nice big follicle, perfect lining and perfect estrogen. We did the trigger shot on tuesday and we are set for a transfer on Monday. Send me all the positive thoughts you can muster - 2:30 pst on monday!

still kickin

2009-10-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

wow, it's been 6 weeks since my last post. sorry.

I'm still here. I've been taking a break, but am about to dive back in.

We had a great vacation on our boat, a much needed time away to focus on family and just have some fun. Now we're home, trying to get organized again and re-motivated for work & household stuff.

Friday was my 39th birthday. My mom came to visit and we had a great fun weekend. Now back to reality.

On the IF front:
I've been going to acupuncture weekly and taking herbs. I think something it working, because I feel better than I've felt in a long time. No depression, energy level is much better, and I just am having the lightest period I've had in almost 2 years. I'm on day 5 of my cycle now, I'll start OPK testing on day 10 and go in for a check on day 11 or 12. We will hopefully be transferring our last two embryos in a couple of weeks.

I haven't done anything about a plan B - if this transfer doesn't work. I don't know what we'll do, and hopefully we won't have to figure that out.

the bad news - I've gained a shocking amount of weight. Vacation was very good to me, too much carbs and wine. So I'm back on a mostly veggie diet this week, trying to get things back under control again. I'm very disappointed in myself here - I'm almost 10 pounds over the number that I swore to never again see. So I must do something about it.

that's it for now. I'll keep y'all posted when I have more cycle updates to share. Hopefully it will be all good news this time.

cancelled

2009-09-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

I've never actually had a cycle cancelled before, so this is a first for me.

My natural FET cycle for this month has been cancelled. I knew it was a possibility, so I'm not overwhelmingly disappointed, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at all disappointed. I knew going in that we we would all agree to cancel if all the stars did not line up just perfectly, and that is what has happened.

My cycle was moving a little slow. It's day 15 now, still no LH surge. I have a decent follicle and my lining looks good. But my Estrogen was at 120 yesterday and still the same today - so it has leveled off at a level that the RE feels is not high enough to support the lining. She doesn't want to take a chance and transfer my last two embryos when everything isn't perfect. She probably could boost it up a bit with some supplemental estrogen, but again that wouldn't be the ideal scenario, so we all agree it's better to wait.

So - next time - we'll still go for the natural cycle, but she'll add in just a little bit of follistim in the few days before ovulation, to get the follicle to grow a little more and put out a bit more estrogen. She feels this is better than putting me on supplemental estrogen.

the only problem - to do this again next cycle would put us right in the middle of our planned sailing vacation. So we either delay the cycle or delay the vacation. Right now I'm more inclined to delay the cycle - I feel like we put so much of our lives on hold waiting for these pregnancies to happen. I'd really be pissed if I messed up my vacation plans and the cycle didn't work. Of course, if we changed our vacation plans and the cycyle did work, then it would all be worth it. Nothing we have to decide now - we just hang out until my period comes and then call the clinic to schedule things.

a plan

2009-08-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

A possible plan, that is. I say "possible", because I reserve the right to cancel at any time. That's the beauty of it.

We are, for the moment, moving forward with a natural FET cycle right away. As in - right now. I went in friday for day 2 monitoring, I starting testing for an LH surge w/ OPKs on day 10 (saturday), and I go for a follicle check ultrasound on day 12 (a week from today). We could potentially be transferring again two weeks from today, if the cycle goes well.

If it all seems a little fast, that's because it is. And that's part of the reason why I am reserving the right to cancel. If I feel like my body or my mind is not ready, then I'll pull the plug. But at least I've got the process going. And the process involves nothing but some monitoring for now, so there's very little physical, emotional or financial investment. It's easy to stop at any time, because there's nothing to be stopped - there are no drugs or hormones for now. A couple days before transfer I'll start a low dose of PIO.

I certainly wouldn't be ready today - I am incredibly drained, physically and emotionally, from the past week. But I think in two weeks I can feel good again. I still intend to have the sit-down with the RE and find out if there is anything we haven't considered that could be causing these FETs to fail. And if she says there is, that some further test might reveal something, then we'll cancel this cycle and do whatever testing we need. But my suspicion is that she will say there is nothing else to be done, it's the luck of the draw, not every embryo makes, etc. And if that's the case, then I'd rather move on sooner than later.

Maybe I'm rushing it. My acupuncturist thinks I am - she would rather see me wait a few months, do a lot of acupuncture, some chinese herbs, etc. But I'm not convinced that these things will make a difference. I just feel like I need to do this to move forward with my life one way or another. If these last two embryos are going to make it, then I want to get there ASAP. If these last two embryos aren't going to make it, then I want to get that over with ASAP.

the morning after

2009-08-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I felt like I had a hangover all day. I was emotionally drained. I had a couple of good crying sessions on sunday, we feel asleep in each others arms. As I was crying myself to sleep Sunday night, my sister was delivering a baby on the other side of the world. My mother was making posts on facebook about how lucky and blessed we all are - but I wasn't feeling quite so. It was an emotional night.

Today I've been awake since 3:30 with a lot on my mind. Baby stuff, work stuff, house stuff. Just everything. But I'm sure it's the underlying stress that has me awake in the first place.

I sorted out a lot of things while lying in bed for a few hours.

First - putting some words around what's different this time, why this seems so much more painful. It's because these embryos have been more real to me. In all my previous failures, before the twins, the embryos didn't seem all that real to me. They didn't have a life - they were a chance, a possibility, a hope - but they were just cells. I never thought of them as babies. I know a lot of people do, but I never did. But when we had our successful cycle, and transfered two embryos that became two babies, it's like all the other embryos became babies in my mind too. I had 6 little frozen brothers and sisters waiting for us. They became real, they became my babies. And so now, it's not just the failure of a possible pregnancy, not just another try gone bad - but now I feel the loss of two more babies. I really feel like I lost something, like 4 of my babies are now gone. I have two left. They are safe where they are now, and I need to think very carefully about how to bring them into the world. Maybe this all sounds crazy, mabye I've finally gone off the deep end.

In terms of next steps. I know a lot of people will say that I need to wait and let myself heal before I make a plan. But for me the making of the plan is a big part of the healing process. It's how I move on - to believe that there is still hope. And having a plan brings that hope back.

I've been doing a lot of digging - and not just on internet discussion boards - but I've come across several reports and research abstracts, about studies that have been done to look at the difference in outcome in a medicated vs. a natural FET cycle. The conclusions I've seen have said that there is no measurable difference in successs rates with a medicated cycle, that natural cycles have the same success rates. One study found that the natural cycle has slightly higher success rates, that the artificially elevated estrogen levels in a medicated cycle might have an impact on the window for implantation. And I've read the websites of several fertility clinics who say that they have better success with natural cycles. So this is what I want to do. I feel in my head and in my gut that this is the right choice. If the data does not prove out that the artificial hormones and cycle manipulation produce better results, then I don't want to put myself through that again. I will not do another FET cycle with the exact same protocol. Something needs to be different, and this feels right. The question is timing - if my RE will agree to this (there are others here that do it if she does not), then how quickly can we do a transfer.

more later...

It's over

2009-08-16T13:48:00.001-07:00

Beta went down. The number was something in the 20's, I don't remember exactly what. I stopped listening to the nurse on the phone who was trying to sound very comforting.

The usual drill - stop all meds, come in sometime this week for a repeat beta, schedule a follow up with the doc, wait for the period from hell, blah, blah, blah.

It's better than getting moderately positive news and then waiting two weeks to see nothing on an ultrasound - been there, done that and it sucks. But this sucks too.

It's weird - after every other failed cycle I have known exactly what to do - we would try again as soon as possible. But this time I feel lost. IVF Failure #7. I don't know why this hasn't worked and I'm not sure if trying the exact same thing again is the right thing to do. I feel like I'd be killing the last two embryos if I transferred them back into this body with the exact same protocol. We need to take a step back and re-examine all our options, look at the whole thing with a fresh view. Maybe we get a second opinion again from another RE, maybe we can try a natural FET cycle, maybe we really roll some wild dice and try another fresh cycle with my embryos, maybe we try a fresh cycle with a different egg donor, maybe we adopt. We need to reconsider all options. I am not ready to give up on having more children - but perhaps this current path is not working out. For the first time in several years, my path is unclear.

This painful. Perhaps even more painful than before. Because it's a wound that I thought was healed. And it has opened up again. And I think to re-open an old injury is maybe more painful than the original injury. I thought I had put this pain past me. I'm very confused. Angry. Sad. Mostly sad.

The only thing I know for sure is that I will be hugging my kids when they wake up from their nap, and then I will be having several glasses of wine this evening.

not negative, but...

2009-08-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

45.4.

It's too low for my comfort. I've been in low beta land before and it didn't end well. I'm not jumping for joy yet - not until I see something good on an ultrasound. Second beta on Sunday.

one more day

2009-08-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night about bleeding. Years ago - like in my teens and 20's - I would dream of getting my period every month, and the very next day I would get it. I haven't had that experience in years, but still, it's not an encouraging sign.

For most of my negative IVF cycles (that would be 6 for anyone who's counting), I have had a bit of spotting the day before my beta. If I have any spotting today I'll be fairly sure it's over. But if not, maybe I'll hold out a little hope.

Still no other symptoms. Maybe the boobs are a little sore this morning. But certainly it hasn't increased.

There's a funny thing about symptoms though - I'm a little bit of a believer of these things being somewhat in your head. Here's why I think that.... Early in my IVF days I had one miscarriage - or blighted ovum, or empty sac - call it what you want. I had a low beta that did double strongly. I had quite a bit of nausea for those few weeks. Right up until the day that I had my ultrasound and saw that the pregnancy wasn't viable. The nausea went away instantly. As soon as my brain knew that there was no 'real' pregnancy - the pregnancy symptoms went away. It was wierd.

I don't know what that means for this - or if this story has any relevance for today. But I was just thinking of it as I was brushing my hair this morning, and pondering the whole symptoms or no symptoms thing.

Hair which, by the way, is getting cut this afternoon. Normally I like my hair pretty long and I just let the guy trim it. But I'm considering doing something a bit more drastic today, I feel like I need freshening up.

Also - I bought a bunch of new clothes the other day. It was retail therapy for sure. Clothes that will not fit very shortly if I am pregnant. But clothes that might help me feel a little better if I'm not. They're all still in my car in bags with the tags on. If the test happens to be positive I'll return them. If not, I have a new not pregnant wardrobe.

today: nothing

2009-08-12T14:15:00.001-07:00

another in my string of crazy updates. Today: no symptoms. boobs not sore. no nausea. no nothing. totally normal.

only two days of crazy making left until I know my fate. god I HATE this.

maybe

2009-08-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe a little bit of breast tenderness and a little bit of nausea today. Or maybe PMS and I ate too much for dinner last night. could go either way.

not feeling optimistic

2009-08-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

I went back and looked at my posts from the cycle where I got pregnant with the twins. At this stage in that cycle I was having sore boobs, nausea, cramping and spotting. I have none of those things right now. This has me feeling somewhat discouraged.

nothing of substance

2009-08-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Up until today - I've felt nothing. totally normal.

Today - feeling tired, bloated, maybe occasionally crampy. But I know these are all things caused by PIO. And I also know these are the exact things I felt last time - PMS type things - and that cycled failed.

so really - nothing that matters is happening here. Half way through. 5 days to go. It's going to be a long week 'til friday.

as good as it gets

2009-08-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

The transfer went perfect and I now have two lovely hatching embryos on board. Everyone on the team (there were 4 people in the room, plus my hubby) was prepared for a challenging transfer, and instead it went very smoothly. There were hopeful (and relieved!) smiles all around. I went for acupuncture before and after which was extremely relaxing. and the nurse had given me a prescription for some extra valium, so I am indulging in a couple of those and plan to stay very mellow for the rest of the day. My nanny is staying late tonight to get the kids fed and put to bed.

So it's all good. We have very positive hopes for a good outcome. Beta is next friday - the 14th.

slight change in plans

2009-07-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

Rarely in this IF world does anything progress faster than you expected. But I often seem to be the execption to the norm.

I went for my lining check this morning - it looks great at 11.4. We discussed the transfer a bit more. My RE mentioned that she wanted to make sure she had her best u/s assistant on hand for the transfer, so she could make sure that she gets the best possible view. And that tech only works on tuesday & thursday. Thursday doesn't work for us - so we're scheduled for tuesday - three days earlier than planned! I've already started the PIO - they had me do one as soon as the blood work came back this morning. The transfer needs to be done on the 6th day of PIO - so by starting today it works out perfect. And it actually works out better from a child-care perspective, as I'll have my nanny to take care of the kids rather than having to get a friend to do it.

So there you go. Transferring at 1pm PST on tuesday!

I'm still here

2009-07-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

I've been away for a while - we had two back-to-back vacations. First to California for 5 days to visit family, and then home for a day and then off to eastern Washington for 4 days with friends. Both trips were very fun, although not all that relaxing. Travelling with little kids rarely is I guess, and visiting with family and friends isn't either - fun, but not relaxing. We got home Monday night to a scorching heat wave. It's supposed to be 100 degrees here today. Nobody here had air conditioning, it just never gets this hot. We have one small portable unit that I have put in the kids room, and I'm contemplating sitting on the floor in there with my laptop.

In IF related news - I'm cycling again. I've been on the pill, and then Lupron, and now estrogen patches. My lining check is tomorrow, and if all goes as planned we will be transferring again next friday, August 7th.

I talked to my RE about the transfer, she said now that she knows what to expect going in, she thinks this transfer will be much smoother and faster and we shouldn't have the issues we had last time. She figured out after much trial and error last time that she needed a much stiffer catheter to straighten out the cervix and get around the c-section scar - so she'll go straight to that this time. She admitted that the only reason she can think of for the last cycle failing is that perhaps the difficult transfer caused some uterine cramping that might have affected implantation. Otherwise everything was perfect - the lining, the embryos, the embryo placement. So hopefully this time will work.

I've gone back to my old acupuncture place. Last time I had tried somebody closer to my house, I thought the convenience would help lessen the stress of having to drive all over town. But I realize now that my other place is so much more relaxing, and they specialize more in fertility, and I just feel in a much better place after leaving there. So it makes for a slightly longer day when doing the before & after transfer acu treaments, but I think it's the right thing to do.

that's all for now.

doing better

2009-06-25T21:43:00.001-07:00

Thanks so much to all of you for your comments. It's so nice to know that so many people are following and hoping the best for me - it really does help.

I'm doing better after my pity party of last week. It's been interesting - this negative result hit us both harder than we thought it would. Jim was pretty low too - and feeling very shocked at how low he was. He said "It's so strange, here I am almost 50 years old, and I'm really depressed that my wife's not pregnant". But we're doing better. We got out on our boat for a couple days last weekend, which is great for taking ones mind off things. The kids are great and remind me every day of how blessed I already am. My work prospects are looking up - this is the end of the FY for the company I am consulting for, so all contracts have to be renewed. Nothing guaranteed yet, but it's looking positive that my contract will get renewed for the same high fee I'm already charging them, and I might have a line on a second contract - the two combined would have me bringing in a tidy sum over the next year. Nothing like $$ to make you feel better about yourself.

And of course I'm already in progress for the next try. I'm on the BCPs now - after the blood bath of the century - the lovely post-IVF period from hell. That's always like adding the final insult to the whole thing. I start Lupron again on July 6th and we are aiming for transfer around the first week in august. I'll remain hopeful and positive - our chances should still be very good - but I won't have the unrealistic 'can't fail' approach that I had this last time. I learned that lesson.

I've caught up on a lot of blogs this evening - sorry I didn't leave any comments - I've got limited time and I wanted to make sure I got caught up with everyone. There's a lot of good news in the blog world - congrats to all of you. And there's some not so good news - I've been there, I'm thinking of you.

I'm on my own with the kids until monday now - Jim has taken off to visit his dad for a few days.

Also a reminder - I also post on a public family blog under my real name - that is where I post updates about my kids, all kinds of pictures and stuff. I feel it's better to keep that content off this site, as I know how it feels to read about kids on an IF blog. But if you want the address of the other blog, just email me - whatifthis at hotmail dot com - if I recognize your name as a commenter here, or your blog name, I'll email you the link. I know some people asked me for it a while back and I think I neglected to answer a few emails - sorry about that - please try again and I promise I'll respond this time. I'm also on FB under my real name - I give that one out a little more selectively, but I'l add you if I know you pretty well.

got to go get some sleep now - I have my hands full for the next few days.

Infertility

2009-06-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

Infertility....

...is depressing

...is devastating

...is exhausting

...is not fair

...is expensive

...is painful

...is disruptive

...is discriminatory

...is lonely

...is isolating

...is time consuming

...is hard on relationships

...is hard on your body

...is hard on your soul

...is draining

...is unmotivating

...is sad

...hurts

...leaves scars

...is emotional

...makes you angry

...makes you doubt yourself

...makes you want to crawl in a hole

...makes you jealous

...makes you judgemental

...makes you feel like a failure

Oh, and did I mention - Infertility SUCKS!

Feel free to join my pity party and add to the list.

another day, another schedule

2009-06-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

Well I did go out and get a bit drunk last night. We went for sushi, I ate all the raw fish I could hold and a drank great deal of sake. I felt much better last night. Today - I'm feeling the effects of the sake.

And because I'm not one to sit back and take a break - I talked to the coordinator - we can start up again right away. We still have to do the full course though - so that means starting again on the BCPs as soon as I get my period, then the lupron, etc. Depending on how quickly I get my period, we're looking at attempting another transfer at the end of July or the first week in August. She said the RE might want to do a mock transfer at some point, just to be sure she has her 'route' around my c-section scar figured out ahead of time.

that's it for today. now trying to get over my hangover and get some work done.

it's official

2009-06-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

no shock - the official beta result is negative. Thanks to all of you for your very supportive comments.

My coordinator is out on mondays, so I've left her a message asking her to call me as soon as possible tomorrow. I want to know how quickly I can go again. Since this was an FET, I'm wondering if they will let me just stay suppressed, have a period, build up the lining and try again in a few weeks. Frankly I highly doubt it, but it can't hurt to ask. My RE is conservative, she probably will want me to take a cycle off, then start all over with the BCPs, etc. blech.

Tonight - I think I will be eating raw fish and drinking too much sake.

and then - some weight loss is in order. I've been eating like a pregnant woman for a few weeks, on all these hormones, indulging my every craving. And plumping up right nicely - so it's time to get that back under control.

But fuck - I'm just pissed today. I don't usually drop the F-bombs, but today I feel justified. I feel infertile again. Back are those old feelings of being a failure - of having a body who can't do this right. For a brief time, I didn't. I had such great success with the first transfer of DE embryos, that I almost considered it my infertility 'cure' - I could have as many babies as I wanted, because I had 6 frozen embroys, every one of which was going to turn into a viable pregnancy. Now that fantasy is dashed. I know it was stupid to begin with.

And now I have been kicked back down into my place - infertile. broken. unable to succeed at the one thing I want to do.

I have been wanting to be pregnant for so many years now - with the exeception of my 9 month pregnancy that went by too fast, there hasn't been a day in the last 6+ years that I haven't been actively thinking about wanting to be pregnant. Even from the day my twins were born, I knew I wanted to be pregnant again and I was thinking about when I was going to do it.

Now I have work to do, and chores to do. But what I really want to do is curl up and go to sleep.

not what I expected to be writing today

2009-06-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

I fully expected this cycle to work. I really never considered the alternative. I mean, why shouldn't it - perfect lining, perfect embryos. It was a batch of embryos that gave me two perfect babies. I figured I had 6 more babies sitting in the cryo just waiting for me. I had the never to wonder what I would do with the remaining 4 after these two resulted in another twin pregnancy.

If you haven't been following me on twitter - the news is that I did POAS last night and it was negative. I'm not one of these people who holds out every last shred of hope for the 'real' result, I've been here too many times before - if I had a (viable) pregnancy, it would have shown up on that test. I'll get the official results this afternoon, but as far as I'm concerned, this is over. I did not do my PIO this morning. (don't give me a hard time about that - if she calls with some stupid low beta I'll do the PIO asap, and a few hours isn't going to make a difference).

I had plans around this pregnancy. That's how confident I was. And that's so stupid. I of all people should know better than that. But I just thought - every other BFN I've ever seen was because of my fucked up eggs - and these embryos are perfect, they wouldn't let me down.

The random stream running through my head for the last 12 hours consists of things like this...

shit
fuck
what an idiot.
why? Why? WHY?
what an idiot I am for being so confident.
WHY?
how quickly can I try again? will they let me go right away again next month?
now what do I do?
damn, this sucks.
was I getting too greedy?

It's so lame, but I sit here thinking how this totally ruins my summer plans. I had all these great plans about buying maternity clothes, how we would announce our news, the great pregnancy pictures I would have. I put things off because I assumed I'd be pregnant - I need some summer clothes, but I avoided buying them. I've been making business plans assuming that I'd be off work for the spring. And I know better than to do all that. I know better.

I'm sure I will experience a range of emotions. But today I am angry. Angry at myself. Angry at the Universe or God or whatever power there may be that lets (or makes) things like this happen.

yeah, about that 2ww thing

2009-06-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

ok, so now I'd be totally lying if I tried to say that the waiting and wondering wasn't starting to get to me. I can only try to ignore it for so long.

Oh yes, the analyzing every little twinge, wondering if it's too early to test, starting off into space when I really have things I need to be getting done, etc., etc. It's all there.

Only 4 days left. I can be strong.

We have told nobody IRL about this cycle. Well, small exception - I have one friend who knows, she's the friend from my original TTC board who very generously agreed to watch my kids during the transfer. She's the only person IRL who knows - otherwise it's just you all in the blogging world, and my online friends from my IVF board. But I swear my mother has a sixth sense - I hear a tone in her voice, like she feels like she knows that something is going on that I'm not telling her about. She's like that - she knows things. But we didn't want to make a big deal about this cycle, have to answer questions, have everyone wanting updates, etc. - BTDT. Our big plan is to make a big announcement in person when we go to San Diego in the middle of July. Assuming this all works out of course. We really want to hold out with the news so that we can tell everyone in person, I think it will be really cool.

So hopefully I will have that positive news to share in July...

the procrastination

2009-06-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

wow, I am seriously procrastinating today. I have work I need to do, to present for a meeting tomorrow, that I haven't even started. Perhaps just a little bit of 2ww obsessing is starting to creep in after all, because I have gotten sucked into the blogosphere rabbit hole in a bad way. But the good news is that I have been catching up on a lot of blogs that I have terribly neglected in recent months.

Along the lines of neglect - my sidebar was in a terrible state of woe. I had people listed as pregnant who delivered a baby over a year ago - so that gives you some idea of how long it's been since I've updated it. I'm sorry to say that a lot of the blogs I used to read appear to no longer be active, I hope those bloggers are doing well. Anyway - I've taken down all my blog lists and I will be rebuilding my list of links ASAP.

the waiting

2009-06-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about a blast transfer is that the '2 week wait' is only 10 days. So that helps. I'm now on day 4 - almost half way. It really hasn't been very bad yet, not nearly has hard as my previous waiting periods. I think having two toddlers to distract you is very helpful.

I'm still mostly not planning to POAS. I don't currently have any in the house. I'm toying with the idea of buying one to use on Sunday night. My beta is monday and Jim will be in an all-day conference and we won't be able to be together for the phone call. So I might do one sunday night just so we can get a test result together. But we'll see.

I'm feeling fine. I keep thinking that I'm feeling little things - slight pulling, minor cramping. But as any of you who have been through this before will know all too well, it's so hard to say whether that really is something I'm feeling, or it's the brain playing tricks on me - making more out of little twinges that are always already there but you normally don't pay any attention to.

PIO is still going just fine. We had one instance where I think he hit a nerve or something as he went in - yowza! instant shock. So he pulled out and started over in a different spot, and all was fine. I swear by the heading pad and the smaller needle - the combination of the two makes a huge difference.

I am still wearing the estrogen patches on my stomach - 2 patches that I change every other day. Callie is very fascinated with the 'tape' on mommy's tummy - she asks for tape when she sees my patches. She's watched me get the PIO shot a couple times and I think she was very curious about that. And interestingly enough - I took them to the pediatrician last thursday for a shot (we are spacing out their immunizations, so we go every month or two for just one shot at at time), and Callie didn't even make a peep when she got her shot. Not sure if she didn't notice because the nurse was so good and fast, or maybe if watching mommy get a shot and seeing that it's no big deal maybe had some effect on her - she's a very perceptive little girl.

that's all for now...

the transfer - not what I was prepared for.

2009-06-06T13:56:00.001-07:00

thanks to everyone for their well wishes for yesterday.

I had intended to update yesterday, but I was pretty wiped out.

The transfer was rough, I was totally not prepared for it, and it really took a lot out of me. Every transfer I've had before (6, for those who are counting), has been easy. But this time was not so.

My c-section scar apparently was in the way - she had a really hard time getting the catheter to make the turn around the scar, so she had to get out a few other instruments to try to straighten out the opening and make the turn with the catheter, and all the while having the assistant pushing really hard on my bladder, to try to use the bladder to push the uterus down a little. I was painful and took a long time. I was trying really hard to breathe through the pain, and squeezing the heck out of Jim's hand.

But, she finally got around the scar and got the catheter in the right place and got the embryos where she wanted them. I shed a few tears when it was all over, I think just finally releasing something after trying to manage through the pain.

I've had a few minor twinges today, maybe cramping or maybe just soreness from having my cervix manipulated so much yesterday. And I was completely exhausted by 9:00 last night.

The good news - the embroys looked great, one was already hatching out and the other was fully expanded and she said was getting ready to hatch. They only had to thaw two, so we still have 4 in the freezer. She said the difficult transfer shouldn't affect the outcome at all. So we'll see.

I'm trying to take it easy today - as much as is reallly possible with two toddlers. But Jim is doing his best to manage them. I think they'll probably end up watching more recorded sesame street than we normally allow, but I guess that's ok for a day. And my step-father called this morning and wanted to come for a visit on his way through town, so I had to pull a simple lunch together. But now I'm resting again with my feet up.

So now the obsessive watch for symptoms begins. I am currently not planning to POAS, but you never know...

a great weekend away, to get in the 'mood'

2009-06-01T13:47:00.001-07:00

We just had our first weekend away from the kids - we left friday afternoon and returned sunday afternoon. It was wonderful. I wasn't feeling like I needed to get away from my kids, but rather that Jim and I have had very little time to focus on each other these last couple of yers, so we took the opportunity to do that. And to celebrate our 10 year wedding aniversary. The weekend was perfect, we enjoyed our time together, relaxed, ate and drank too much, etc. And the kids did just fine without us.

I think a little "us" time was also appropriately timed right before this FET transfer - coming up on friday (on our actual aniversary day). It was good to get in the right frame of mind, slow down the crazyness that our days can be sometime, get a little pampering and deep breaths.

No news to report on the cycle really. No more lupron. Day 2 of PIO, and it's going just fine. Just like riding a bicycle - it comes right back so easily. I have my method down and it works great for me... I use a 25g needle instead of the prescribed 22g needle - it's less traumatic to the ass, and the oil still comes out just fine. First I warm both the ass and the oil-filled syringe with a heating pad for 10 minutes or so, then we do the shot with the smaller needle - the nice warm oil flows out easily, and then (time permitting), I sit on the heating pad for another 10 minutes after. This historically has resulted in minimal soreness for me. Hopefully that will continue to be the case this time.

Transfer is at 2:00 on friday. I have acupuncture at noon. And a friend arrives to sit with the kids at 1:00 - the only person IRL who knows we are cycling this time. She's a dear friend whom I met online during my early days of IVF - we had a lot of similar experiences and made a wonderful connection and she lives only about 20 minutes from me.

that's all for now.

all set!

2009-05-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Lining check today was good - 11.3, actually which is excellent for me. So we are all set for our FET transfer.

We got to choose our transfer day - I just have to be on PIO for 6 days prior to transfer, so it could have been any date late next week. We chose next friday, June 5th. It's nice to do on a friday so we have the whole weekend off, but also that day is our 10 year wedding aniversary - and I thought that might bring us a bit of good luck.

just plugging along, very boring

2009-05-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

Gosh I've turned into a terrible blogger.

It's a funny irony actually - when I was working full time, I actually more 'spare' time to do things like blogging - I had time sitting in my office in between stuff. But now that I am working from home and only part time, my spare time is spent with the kids. So it's harder to find time to update blogs.

Also this cycle has been pretty dull so far. Still on Lupron and estrogen patches, nothing really to comment on there.

I'm keeping a very positive attitude - not sure if that will backfire on me - but I have it in my head that this FET is going to work, I really haven't considered the alternative. I'm making plans around the assumption that I will be pregnant in a few weeks. I've been through this 6 times before, I ought to know better, but I guess my gut sense is just telling me that this is all going to work.

I decided to do the acupuncture, I decided that if the cycle didn't work and I hadn't done the acu, then I would forever wonder if the acu would have made it work. So rather than leave myself an opportunity to second guess, I am doing it. But I found a new place - I don't like them quite as much, it's not quite the same zen relaxed atmosphere, but it's just down the street from my house and on the way to the clinic, so it will work much better on transfer day.

On the schedule for this week: Thursday is my lining check. If all looks well, then I will start the PIO and we'll schedule the transfer for late next week. Otherwise we'll be scheduling a follow up lining check, and probably be increasing the estrogen. Friday I have acupuncture, and then friday afternoon my husband and I leave for our first weekend away from the twins - ever. Next week - June 5th (very likely also our transfer day) - is our 10 year wedding aniversary. So we're taking a little 'us' time to celebrate.

not a lot

2009-05-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

Not a lot to report here.

I'm off the OCPs - stopped that on friday. And I have had a light period.

The Lupron is going fine. I have had some headaches, but I also have been weaning myself off the extreme coffee habit I developed over the winter, so that is just as likely to be the cause of the headaches. I had gotten into a bad habit of sipping on coffee all day long - probably because I'm working at home it's easy to get it. So I've switched back to green tea, which still has some caffeine, but a lot less. It's better for my body, and I want the body to be ready for pregnancy.

I'm so much more aware of every detail in my body now, after being through this so many times. I'm pretty sure the Lupron has done its thing - I feel like my estrogen level is really low. Estrogen, in the right amounts, makes you feel good, it makes you feel normal. And without the estrogen I just feel off, it's hard to explain, but I just don't feel right. As strange as it sounds - I'm looking forward to those estrogen patches.

My supression check is tomorrow - if all checks out good then we reduce the Lupron dose and start the estrogen patches.

I'm debating about acupuncture. I did it in all of my previous cycles. And I did the before and after transfer acupuncture. I can't prove that it made any difference - 5 failed transfers with my eggs and one successful one with donor eggs - I'd say the success factor was the eggs, not the acupuncture. But it really is relaxing and really helps mellow me out and get very peaceful. But - it's a big fire drill too. They didn't offer it at my clinic (although I'll ask tomorrow if maybe now they do - maybe things have changed in 2 years), so I had to go to the acupuncture place an hour and a half before my transfer, have the treatment, then get back in the car and drive across town to the clinic, have the transfer, then back in the car across town to the acupuncture, then home. It turns a quick transfer day into a full morning. Which was fine when it was just us, but now that I have two kids at home that I probably am going to have a friend watching for me during the transfer, I'm just not sure it's worth the extra two hours to do the acupuncture. If they now have someone who does it at the clinic, then I'll definitely do it. But if not, I don't know.

I'll let y'all know how the supression check goes tomorrow.

the facebook thing

2009-05-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Totally not IF related - so if you've come here only for that, feel free to skip this one.

anyway...

I'm on Facebook. Isn't everyone? I've found it to be a very cool way to reconnect, and stay connected with a lot of my old school friends, and some family members that I don't see very often. I'm not one of those people who adds everyone I've ever known, worked with, dated, been related to, etc. I only add people that I actually consider my 'friends'.

Up until recently, I hadn't gotten a friend request from anyone that I wasn't interested in adding. But lately, I've got three..

1) a cousin. she lives here in my town. we have no relationship - her mother and my father are half-siblings. They and we never got along. I don't know what she's looking for from me, and I'm afraid that if I add her then she will want to get together with me, which is something I have no interest in.

2) an old college roommate. We parted strangely. Actually, I cut her off because I felt like she was kind of stalking me. Did you ever see the movie "Single White Female"? kind of like that. She said she googled me, saw that I was on FB, and so she joined FB. eew, somebody joined FB just so they could track me down?

3) the latest and wierdest today - an old college boyfriend. He dumped me. But then he was kindof obsessed over me for years. He used to call me late at night when he was drunk and tell me what a mistake he made. He actually called me the night before his wedding. I see in his FB profile that he's married - I wonder if it's that wife.

What to do about these people? So far I have just ignored these friend requests.

mama

2009-05-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

I spent some time yesterday and today reading about Maddie. I of course had heard her story for the past several weeks, I had tried to visit their site when she first passed, but the server was down. and I finally got back there this week and read her story. I read about the real and raw pain that her mother is living with. My heart aches for her.

It made me so sad. I sat at my computer yesterday sobbing. I sobbed in the shower after.

This is what struck me the the most: '....I remembered that Maddie never called me Mama. She had other words for me (Da Doo was her favorite), but I couldn’t wait to hear her sweet voice say “mama”.'

Callie has just recently started calling me "mama". And it's the most beautiful sound. And now after reading this, I think about Maddie and her mother every time I hear it. It breaks my heart to think about never hearing that word from her.

backstory - sorry this is a long one

2009-04-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

oh. hello. gosh, I just looked at the date and realized what a slacker I've been. Not a lot to report I guess - or maybe not a lot of time to report it.

I think the May/June update on Cyclesista will be going up soon, and since I'll be on it, I thought I'd do a little recap of where I've been, for those of you who find yourselves here for the first time, or maybe the first time in a while.

I used to have all this history on the site, but I got listed on a website saying nasty things about donor eggs, and so I took this info down from the blog. And I'll take it down again if I get any of what I consider 'not nice' attention. I share this to hopefully connect with others who have a shared experience, we can support each other. But this is my life, and I'm not interested in opinions who don't agree with the route I've chosen to take.

So here's the story....

We started trying to get pregnant in January of 2004 - I quit taking the pill in December of 2003.

After 8 months of no results, we went straight to a fertility doctor and both got tested. Results showed that I should have been fine, I always had very regular cycles, etc. But the results also showed that we had a serious sperm issue.

In October my husband had surgery to try to re-open the plumbing. It was only moderately successful - they made us wait for months because they said it could take a while for swelling, production, etc. But by May of 2005 the SAs were still coming back very poor - very low count and low motility.

So in June of 2004 we went straight to IVF - the sperm counts were too low to even bother attempting IUI.

And here's my IVF history...

IVF #1 June 2005 - Standard "long lupron protocol". At the first u/s there were only 5 follicles. They increased the meds every day. I stimmed for 13 days. Retrieved 11 eggs. But only 5 were mature. Did ICSI on those 5. Of those - 3 fertilized, but one did not divide. So on day 3 we transferred two embryos, one was a 4-cell, one was an 8-cell. 12 days later - Beta HCG was negative.

At this point I was still feeling positive. What are the real odds of it working on the first try anyway? I figured it will work next time...

IVF #2 - September 2005 - same protocol. But we started out on the higher dose of meds. And they let the follicles get bigger before the trigger - thinking we triggered too soon last time. Well - I woke up from the retrieval to hear the news that there were only 4 eggs. All the rest had disintegrated. And then the next day the news that two of those didn't even make it to fertilization. So again we had two. On day three we transferred one 6-cell and one 7-cell. Both "poor" quality. Negative - not a big surprise.

IVF #3 - January 2006 - this time we're trying a new protocol. The RE says I may just be one of those rare people that responds very poorly to Lupron - maybe the Lupron was toxic to my eggs. She really doesn't think that they pushed me too far. Or maybe I have an egg quality issue - but I wasn't hearing any of that yet. So - Antagon protocol. I stimmed great! 15 mature eggs were retrieved. 12 Fertilized. They wanted to go to blast this time. So on day 5 we transferred two good quality blasts. And we had one blast to freeze. I start spotting a week before the beta. This was just like before - and this was just like how I feel before I get my period. So I was convinced that it didn't work and I convinced them to give me the beta a day early. Well wouldn't you know it - it was positive. 39. Low. But we did the beta a day early. After two days it tripled. and two more days up another 2.5 times. I started to have nausea. So at 6 weeks 2 days we went for the first pregnancy ultrasound. We should see a sac, a yolk sac, a fetal pole, and maybe a heartbeat. Nothing but an empty sac. Repeat the u/s a week later. Still a lovely empty sac. stop the meds, wait for the miscarriage. I was devastated. If you've been through it - I don't have to tell you how it feels. If you haven't - well, I hope you never have to. It was the greatest sadness I have ever experienced.

But - the outlook was good. The RE felt that maybe we had figured out the right protocol. We just got unlucky this time. 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. But I can get pregnant. Good news. Next time will work.

IVF #4 - June 2006 - The protocol worked great last time. And we just got hit by the odds of a pregnancy that didn't succeed. But it's good news that we know I can have an embryo implant. So again - great stimulation. 17 mature eggs retrieved. 15 fertilized. Since we know I can make blasts now (although not very many) - they decide that we should not wait until day 5. We will just take the best on day 3 and transfer. But on day three we don't even have 1 8-cell embryo. We transfer 3 - one 7-cell and two 6-cell. By day 6 one of the remaining ones has miraculously become a blastocyst, so it is frozen. So now we have two frozen. HCG = negative. I was shocked. I thought for sure this is the one.

In the follow up appointment the RE brings up the egg quality discussion. She says that based on the results of 4 cycles and the 'poor efficiency' with which I made good embryos, that she believes I have an egg quality issue. So we got a second opinion - we had a top Dr in the country review our records - and he agreed. The consensus - after 49 eggs retrieved and only a total of four 8-cell embryos on day 3 - is that it is a problem with the eggs. Everyone agreed that donor eggs was probably our best chance of success.

But we had two frozen - so we decided to try them and keep our hopes up. They were 'excellent quality' blasts.

FET #1 (cycle #5) - September 2006 - Turns out they were excellent quality - better than anything we ever transferred before. Everyone was very optimistic about these - all the nurses, the RE, the embryologist, etc. And... it was negative. I wasn't even all that devastated that time, I guess I had stopped hoping.

What next?

As luck would have it - I have a sister who is 11 years younger than me. She agreed to give me her eggs - she didn't even give it a second thought when I asked. It is the most generous gift a sister could ever give. We started our donor egg cycle in December of 2006, she stimmed beautifully and we got 20 eggs, 18 fertilized and we ended up with 8 beautiful blasts. We transferred two perfect embryos on January 23rd, 2007.

After 6 IVF cycles, 380 shots, 84 estrogen patches, 49 eggs retrieved (from me), 13 embryos transferred...

on September 21, 2007 - the two most beautiful babies in the world were born. It was the happiest day of my life.

It's funny, when you have twins, people assume you're done. "hey, a boy and a girl, you're all set!". Nobody asks if you plan on having more. But being pregnant once isn't enough for me. I loved being pregnant, I loved everything about it. I nursed both my babies for over a year. And being a mother is the most rewarding thing I've ever done. It was and is worth every minute of emotional pain I went through. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful for the gift that I have and I will be the happiest mother in the world even if I don't have any more children. But.

I want to do it again.

We have 6 frozen embryos. We are embarking on an FET cycle to try for another pregnancy. I am on BCPs now, I start Lupron on monday. The plan is to transfer two embryos on/around June 5th.

Welcome to the next segment of my journey.

it is done

2009-04-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

We fired the nanny last night. Definitely qualifies for one of the top 5 most uncomfortable moments in my life.

She obviously knew what was up - she had left messages for the nanny agency earlier in the day and they had avoided calling her back until after we talked to her. Clearly when both Jim and I arrive home, together, in the late afternoon - something is up. She was busier than I've ever seen her. She had the kids downstairs in the play room (for one of the first times ever without my insistence), and she was doing a craft project with them (first time ever) - she would not make eye contact with us, she was just flurrying around the room. It was as if she could just avoid the conversation if we didn't have a moment to get a word in. Jim finally had to tell her a couple of times to stop what she was doing.

The conversation itself was quick - Jim said "we're letting you go". She said "I know". That was basically it. She stood there and looked at the kids for a minute. She shrugged, stormed upstairs, went to the bathroom, went out to her car to get our housekey, and left - fewer than five words were uttered. Not what I expected. I expected her to get mad, to argue, to want an explanation, to want to say goodbye to the kids. I didn't expect her to just leave.

Afterwards she told the nanny agency that she was disappointed and that she did not like the way things were handled and that she didn't have anything to say (that our minds were made up). She felt that she had adequate reasons for being late and that she had done everything she could to arrive on time every day.

I find that kind of annoying. Just because she had a good reason every day, doesn't make it ok to be late 90% (or more) of the time. I should have kept records of it - but honestly I think she was here at 8am less than 5 times in the 10 months she worked for us. She needs to understand that at some point, it's just not acceptable no matter how good the reason or no matter how hard she is 'trying' to get here on time - it simply wasn't working and I think she's in denial. We talked to her about it many, many times. We gave her written feedback on it at her review in January - and she was even late the day after receiving that feedback in her review. If she really was doing everything she could to arrive on time, then really she should recognize that it just wasn't possible, and that we really had no choice.

Yes, our minds were made up after she was an hour late last week without calling - that was the final straw, but it certainly was not an isolated incident. But, water under the bridge. I'm sure there's always room for improvement in how we handled the situation, I feel bad about that, but I don't feel bad about the decision. Perhaps we shouldn't have waited the week - perhaps we should have done it immediately once we made the decision. I don't know. I hate it when things end badly, but I don't know how to have ended this one in a better way - firing someone is always going to go over poorly.

She actually had the nerve to ask the agency if we would be a reference for her. I don't think I could do that. There were other things about her job performance that had really slid down hill lately - but that weren't even worth bothering to address because the tardiness alone was reason enough to let her go. So I don't think I could in good conscience recommend her as a nanny for another family. I never felt like the kids were in any kind of danger in her care - I think she took good care of them - but she just wasn't really living up to the requirements of the job.

I feel emotionally drained from this whole experience. I was sick to my stomach all day yesterday leading up to it, and I was kind of in shock for a while after.

In better news - we may already have a new nanny. We interviewed a great gal on wednesday night who we absolutely loved. We have a couple more lined up to interview tonight and tomorrow, but I think we'll have it figured out pretty quickly.

I think I'm supposed to start my OCPs in the next few days... need to dig out the FET schedule to be sure.

huh?

2009-04-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

Of course I completely forgot to include in that last update a very big one: that Callie had eye surgery two weeks ago friday - to open up a clogged tear duct. Very minor surgery in the grand scheme of things, but still stressful for mommy. She came through it like a champ, and her follow up appointment today was perfect.

************************
Awkward situation of the day (or year):

The nanny confronted me about an hour ago - asked me point blank if we were looking for a new nanny.

I was caught very off guard - I lied and told her no. I didn’t know what to do, it was very awkward and I just reacted with the quickest way to avoid the conversation - I don't know if I handled it appropriately or not. We were sitting with the kids having lunch, the housekeeper was in the next room - not really the right time for that kind of conversation.

She said she had just gotten a vibe, and cited a couple minor examples of my behavior that were a little out of the ordinary this week (the fact that we cancelled our date night tonight), and that she saw the nanny agency number come up on the caller ID. I had some of the nanny candidate papers out on my desk in my office - but they were turned over and she would have had to have been actively snooping in order to have seen them (she wouldn't have any reason to be in my office in the first place) - so I don't know if she did see some of that stuff, or if she really was just acting on a 'vibe'.

We're firing her tomorrow at the end of the day. So I have another day of awkwardness ahead of me.

I feel bad about letting someone go in this economy - but every day she gives me another reason to feel that it's the right decision. If she is concerned about her job, she certainly isn't acting like it - yesterday for example: sitting on my couch texting and reading a magazine while my kids are wandering around the living room obviously bored - she got strangely lazy all of a sudden. I considered saying something to her about it, but I figured we've already decided to fire her in two days, so what's the point.

Two nanny candidate interviews lined up for tonight and tomorrow night, and two more in my inbox that I need to call. Interesting side effect of this economy - lots of great nannys are looking for jobs, because they are getting laid off when their employers get laid off. So different from a year ago, when we were competing for the nannies - now the nannies are competing for us.

************

box of meds for the FET arrived today. The nanny asked me what was in the box. I replied "just stuff". I need to get home and get it open and get it in the fridge (lupron needs to be refrigerated, right?), but I wasn't about to open it in front of her. Appropriately, the fedex man also delivered a large box of wine from my favorite winery at the same time - meds and alcohol, a perfect pair!

*************

I'm going to try to start using the twitter account again - whatifthis is the name on twitter - for the FET updates and occasional not-for-everyone rantings that I can't include on my 'public' twitter profile.

not that I'm complaining or anything

2009-03-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Let’s review… In the last three weeks:

Danny has started walking
He has also grown about a foot and can now reach things on the table and counters – so I need to rearrange everything.
Callie’s vocabulary has doubled – and I think she has started saying “no”. great.
She laughs at me when I try to give her a time out.
Callie has started running
The kids both started preschool
Danny has started new PT and OT
My MIL was at my house on very short notice for 3 days. And she’s coming back today.
I have a mooching grown step-son ‘temporarily’ staying in my basement who has now been here almost 5 months (although I think he may have finally found a place of his own and hopefully is moving soon)
Jim’s ex wife managed to over extend and then default on a credit card that he didn’t even know his name was still on – so the credit card company has come after us for the money – screwing his credit and our plans to refi our mortgage
I have had poop on me once and on the floor once, pee on the floor 3 times, been barfed on twice, had snot wiped all over me (so nice to be out shopping and realize that there are dried boogers on your shoulder).
I have had an oil heater explode in my children’s room – thank GOD they weren’t in there at the time.
I am in a fight with my father – because he thinks I don’t may him enough individual and personal attention. ha!
I had the period from hell last week
My daughter has a cold
My son has constipation so bad it makes him sweat and shake and scream when he tries to go (because I skipped one day of the preventative laxative that his pediatrician has prescribed – so no mothers guilt happening there…)
I have been trying to pull together our tax info – much more complicated this year as I am now self employed and working from a home office
My allergies are starting up and my eyes have been itching like crazy
I’ve gained 5 pounds in the last two weeks – I’m sure from all the comfort food and drink I’ve been consuming
We are firing our nanny on Thursday – because she can not show up on time reliably if her life depended on it, and I can’t take it any more. (but of course she showed up on time today – I’m sure because she realized how furious I was when she showed up an hour late last week and hadn’t called).
So now in my spare time I have to interview for a new nanny
Danny is already outgrowing his car seat because he is so tall – so I researched and ordered two more. But somehow I accidently ordered 4 instead of 2 (not that I have a lot going on in my head or anything). So now I have purchased $1,000 in car seats, and have to try to return two of them.

…and I start Lupron in one month, because you know, my life is not crazy enough with just two kids, we need more!

I wonder why I’m so tired?

I typically pride myself on being a person who can handle whatever is thrown at me, and I never complain, but this all just feels like some kind of fucked up karma test to see just how much can be piled on before I crack. Wahahaha….

what a week

2009-03-25T14:36:00.000-07:00

Having a hard time finding even a few minutes to write a blog post. This week has got me pretty stressed out.

Work was quiet for a while but last week it got busy again. Callie had eye surgery on friday - to open her clogged tear duct. the kids started preschool which requires me to go two mornings a week. I'm in a bit of a war with my dad (very long story) which just makes me irritable and emotional. Jim's mom is staying with us because she had to come over for some skin cancer surgery so I'm having to cook family dinners every night (and she tried to drive home today but got turned around because the mountain passes are closed so she will try again tomorrow). My allergies are acting up. We're trying to figure out whether our nanny is the right nanny for the coming year (not the motivation level we'd like to see for active toddlers, and she can not show up for work on time to save her life.). We've got a bit of a credit mess with Jim's ex-wife that put our refi plans on hold. Jim is super overwhelmed with his job, and he's been getting home late every night and leaving before the kids get up most mornings, so I'm managing the household mostly by myself, but I can't really complain to him about it because he is not happy that he's basically only seeing the kids on the weekends, so there's no point in making him feel worse than he already does.

So anyway I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed with life this week and would really like to just crawl in my bed and sleep for a couple of days, or escape from it all and have a nice cup of tea with a friend. I feel like I need to catch my breath. But, have to pull myself together and make dinner instead. You know how it is.

In other news... I had my SIS (saline injection sonogram) test today, and all is well with the ute. We're clear to move ahead with our FET cycle.

back to the chaos now...

dipping in and out

2009-03-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've noticed, if you're still reading - that I don't post here all that often. Because really this was my infertility blog, so I mostly posted about that, and there hasn't been a lot to say on that topic for a while. And I also use this space for venting about personal things that I don't share elsewhere (thanks for the support when I had a bad day last week!) - its my private little corner to air things out when things aren't going so great. And so I guess the fact that I don't post much maybe is good news - it means that things are going pretty well most of the time, so I don't need to write much here.

I have an FET cycle coming up, and I will be talking about that here. Everything is set - I start the BCPs in April, start Lupron in May, and we're aiming for an early June transfer. So watch this space for those updates - there just isn't much to say yet.

For the happy news and updates on the kids - I post very regularly (at least once a week) to my public blog for family and friends. I'm happy to share that address with any of my regular visitors here. I know several of you already have it. But if you don't have the address, just send me an email, and if I know who you are I'll give you the link. It's not password protected, I just don't advertise the address here.

Also - I'm spending a lot of time on Facebook lately. Another little addiction I don't really have time for, but it's been really awesome to connect with some old friends, and get to know some new friends better. So same as above - email me and I'll tell you how to find me on FB if I know who you are.

talk at you later.

deep breath

2009-03-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

The good news: I didn't do it.

The bad news: I came closer to striking my own child today than I ever thought I would.

Daniel likes to scream. Not because he's upset - it's not a 'screaming and crying' kind of scream. It's just an 'exercising his voice' kind of scream. I think perhaps it's partly because he doesn't talk, that he has very few ways to express himself. And this is one of the few ways that he has chosen. Telling him "no" doesn't do any good. He just does it more. I'm told by others that the best course is to just ignore the behaviour, don't give him a reaction, and he'll eventually stop doing it. I'm pretty good at that most of the time. But occasionally - when he's screaming nonstop in my face while I'm trying to dress him, it's too much to handle. Today I just wanted to smack him. But I didn't. I dressed him, put him in his bed, walked away and closed the door, and went to another room to catch my breath. Of course he quit the screaming and amused himself quietly, when I'm not there for him to scream to.

These are the days when I feel inadequate.

I am home alone with the kids one day a week. Friday is my day off, and the nanny's day off. So it is the one day of the week that I have the kids all to myself, Jim is at work.

It concerns me that the stress of one day gets to me. If I can't handle this for one day a week - who am I kidding?

deep breaths.... counting to ten....

almost seems to easy

2009-02-13T14:38:00.001-08:00

Met with the RE on wednesday. FET scheduled for June. Just like that.

It almost seems to easy.

I was wierd to be there. That old place with so much hope, and letdowns, and sadness and happiness. Everyone was happy to see us, of course I took photos of the twins. I don't think they get too many people with twins coming back for more. But they are happy to oblige. The doc made a little joke about "we don't make judgements on what size family someone wants to have", and then went on to give us some of her opinions about the california octuplets case - opinions about the doc, not the mother. It was interesting, and a little suprising that she was so chatty and candid - I recall her being all business before. But she seemed much chattier than before.

Anyway - the cycle. We said we were thinking June would be ideal (allows me to not be too pg to travel for thanksgiving, and would give us a spring baby, and exactly 2.5 years between the kids). Of course we know better than most that "ideal" doesn't always happen, but hey, you can't cure a life long planner. So I try to plan.

anyway - I'll start BCPs in April, Lupron after that, then supression check late may, and if all goes well we'll have a transfer around the first week in June. We agreed to transfer 2 - she thought that was just fine given my stellar pregnancy and the fact that we are not opposed to having twins again. We have 6 in the freezer, so we'll thaw until we get two and go for it.

that's it. seems so simple. I got a packet in the mail the very next day with the schedule, prescriptions, etc.

gotta run, baby waking from nap now.

sometimes when I'm tired, I have doubts

2009-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

We've had a rougher few days then we're used to. We've been very spoiled by babies who started sleeping through the night pretty early. But we've had several nights lately with middle of the night wakeups (poor Daniel and his full colon), and also Daniel has also decided that he's a morning person (which I am not).

It's some of the times like these that I wonder whether I can really do it all over again. I get flashbacks of memories of being exhausted to the point of tears, of sitting at the dinner table and crying in my meal, just out of sheer exhaustion. Can I really do it again? Can I be woken up every 2 - 3 hours in the night? Do I have the energy for all the breastfeeding, the pumping?

And I wonder whether things will be so much harder with 3 (or 4) kids. Will travelling be so much of a pain that we become the people that never go anywhere.

We're at such a fun stage right now. Despite the lack of sleep, the babies are relatively easy. It's easy to eat with them because they just eat what we eat, and they behave very well in stores, and they play very well on their own.

I guess it's normal to have second thoughts. We haven't done anything yet, we're just planning. But sometimes I wonder whether this is smart planning.

But then again - I remember how much I loved being pregnant. I think I'm one of the rare people who really loved pregnancy, and especially twin pregnancy. And despite the exhaustion they really were easy babies.

I don't know. I'm doubting myself. Then doubting my doubting.

the bottle situation

2009-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

The pediatrician said that at 15 months the bottles must go. I don't really understand why, but ok, I'm trying. Dropping the mid-day bottle was easy. And actually dropping the morning bottle was pretty easy too. The issue is that I can't get them to drink milk out of cups. I've tried every cup and every temperature of milk. They'll drink some water from cups, and diluted juice, but nowhere near the quantity they would take from a bottle. Everybody tells me that it's normal that they drink less during the transition, and that it's ok. The issue is that Daniel system is so sensitive, and the decrease in liquids has made him severely constipated. The poor guy is sobbing while trying to poop. We had gotten over his constipation problem months ago, and I'm not happy about it being back. Is it so important that we wean off a bottle? Important enough to have to make this poor boy suffer like this while he's learning that he's supposed to drink from a cup? I'm confused and this is one of the few times in this parenting experience that I feel like I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

they're just people!

2009-01-26T14:51:00.000-08:00

My mother was here for a few days. The socializing is tiring, but it's wonderful to have her help. She takes good care of us.

But something I don't understand - why do some people talk to babies in such high pitched voices? The way she talks to them drives me crazy. They're people - just talk to them like people!

thanks

2009-01-26T14:39:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone for your kinds words about Daniel.

We're feeling good about the progress we're making. We have our first speech therapy appointment on wednesday morning, and our first home visit with the teacher on wednesday afternoon.

One of the first things we will be working on is helping him communicate his needs, and also helping him communicate with his sister in a better way. He has taken to biting her, which makes for lots of tears from everyone in the house. Granted, sometimes she's asking for it. In fact, the worst incidents she has really been asking for - trying to take away a toy or shove him out of the way. His only way of communicate his displeasure is to bite her. So we will be working on that.

He is also getting orthotics for his shoes, not sure if I mentioned that already. We and the PT noticed the problem very quickly a few weeks ago, once he started spending a lot of time standing. His feet and ankles are very weak, and he was starting to lean over and stand on the inside of his foot in a very awkward way. This could be very bad for the development of his knees and hips, and was quickly starting to deform his foot. So the orthotics will give him the needed support for his foot and ankle while he builds his muscle strength. Those have been ordered and will hopefully be in this week.

He also seems to have a few lightbulbs going on in the cognitive department, he seems to be understanding a few more words, and maybe even attempting a few signs.

full disclosure - very long post

2009-01-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

First - regarding my last post. I still haven't actually sent the mail. I'm a chicken. I guess maybe because I don't even want to know what his reply will be. I asked my mom what she thinks he knows. She says she's never said a word to him about it. She said my other sister just knows that we did IVF, so he's probably heard that piece from her. I do think I need to reply to the mail, and I will eventually. I just need to get up the courage. But your comments were all really helpful, I appreciate your support. And I really love it when some of you lurkers come out to offer your supportive comments.

Next - as promised recently, I've got a very long update on Danny. I wrote a very long and detailed document outlining the full situation, I emailed it first to all his grandparents, and today I have posted it on our family blog, and have copied that post below. I've probably over simplified some of the facts, and some of you who are living similar situations might recognize areas where I'm not quite accurate. But I wanted to write it in language that would make sense to our family, who aren't googling every term the doctors utter. We've given various combinations of our parents various updates over the last month or so, but at this point I wanted to make sure that they all were getting the exact same information, and it's too hard to keep track of what we've said to whom.

here it is.....

I’m long overdue on giving our family and friends a more comprehensive update on Danny. Apologies if posting this on the blog seems like an impersonal way to tell you all of this information, but it’s the easiest way for me to make sure that everybody is getting the full story and the same information, without having to repeat myself many times.

It is probably obvious if you do only a little bit of reading between the lines (or the photos) that Danny is behind. And maybe it’s obvious that I never mention it. I’ve never talked about it specifically, I tend to gloss over what he doesn’t do and just focus on updating you on what he does do. But I’m sure it’s obvious that he’s not yet walking, only just starting to pull to standing, not talking, etc. I haven’t talked about this largely because we had a lot more questions than answers, and we wanted to wait to discuss this until we had more information, maybe a diagnosis, maybe a plan. At least some answers.

As a parent I think it’s normal that at some point along the way you start to notice little things, and you stop and ask whether your child is ok. This is probably especially true when you have twins, as it starts to become more and more obvious that there are big developmental differences between them. You ask… is he just a late bloomer? Is he just on the low end of normal, but still normal? Or is he falling off the bottom of the curve? We started asking ourselves these questions several months ago, first privately in the back of our heads, and then out loud to each other, and then to his pediatrician.

But then we also started asking the pediatrician the other self-doubt questions. Are we over analyzing things? Are we doing too much comparing when really all kids are different and develop at their own pace? Or do we have reason to be concerned and should we intervene? The simple answer from the pediatrician finally was yes, we have reason to be concerned and we should collectively intervene - to make sure there isn't any underlying problem that needs to be addressed, and do what we can to help him catch up.

The pediatrician recommended a series of things, all of which we have done over the last couple of months. And one recommendation leads to another, which leads to another, which gets us to where we are today.

The very short version of the story: Danny is developmentally delayed. But there’s a lot of story behind that, so I’ll try to go through the obvious questions, and the best answers I can give.

What’s the diagnosis, and who diagnosed him?
The pediatrician referred us to a neurologist, to see if there were any neurological reasons for him to be falling behind. There aren’t. The official diagnosis that came from the neurologist is “non-specific mild global developmental delay”. Non-specific means that he is behind for no specific reason that can be attributed to any disorder, syndrome, brain damage, birth defect, etc. Mild just means mild – it’s not severe. Global means is pretty much across the board – he’s not behind in just one area, but pretty much all areas. Developmental Delay means: “…any significant lag in a child's physical, cognitive, behavioral, emotional, or social development, in comparison with norms.”

She also sent us to Seattle’s Children’s Hospital – to their Neurodevelopmental Clinic, where he was evaluated by a therapist and a neurodevelopmental nurse practitioner. The conclusion is the same – he is developmentally delayed, but for no specific reason.

We have also had him tested at a few different places – Children’s Hospital, Swedish Hospital Pediatric Therapy Services, and the Boyer Children’s Clinic – all as part of the process of figuring out what kind of treatment he needs. I’ll get into more detail on those later – but every one of those places and their tests show varying levels of delay across a variety of areas.

Why is he delayed?
Nobody knows. There is nothing to be found in his history that would indicate reason to believe that he has any kind of brain damage – no issues with the pregnancy or the birth. I’ve talked to my OB about all this and agreed that there was nothing in the pregnancy or birth that might have contributed to this. I had a very healthy pregnancy – one of the least complicated twin pregnancies he’s ever seen. And we had a relatively uncomplicated birth. Danny did have a few minor problems at birth, but everyone that has reviewed his records has indicated that these things were minor and would not have caused this. We asked the neurologist whether this was because he was a twin – we got an enthusiastic “no” to that question – being a twin has nothing to do with this. “It is common for non-identical twins to not be identical”, that’s it.

The best answer that the neurologist was able to give us is that this is most likely an issue of brain maturity – that his brain is just immature for his age. If this is the case, then his brain will eventually mature and he will catch up. It could be that there’s some little part of his brain that developed a little differently, and maybe an MRI would show us something. But it’s unlikely, not worth the risk of the general anesthesia that would be needed to do an MRI on a 15 month old, and would not likely result in any information that would lead us to any different treatment or therapy than we’re already doing. So for now, the neurologist, the pediatrician, the neurodevelopmental NP, and us are all in agreement that doing a brain MRI is not warranted.

What kinds of tests were done?
We were careful to not put him through anything overly traumatic or invasive that wasn’t necessary. The most traumatic thing that he’s had done is to draw some blood. And really the being held down is the most traumatic part of that procedure.

As for medical tests: the pediatrician had some metabolic screening run on his blood, to rule out any metabolic disorders that would impede development. She also had a test run on his chromosomes, to rule out any chromosomal issues. His chromosomes are fine. We also took him to an allergist and had him tested for food allergies, as it was suggested to us that food allergies can delay development, and he doesn’t have any food allergies. (And before you think that allergy testing must have been traumatic – it was barely a scratch and he was more bothered by the cold alcohol swab and sitting with his shirt off, and hardly even noticed the actual test). The net of all the medical exams and testing is that he’s healthy and normal.

The neurologist went through a series of little tests on his reflexes, strength, tone, etc. All in the form of playing games with him. These confirmed developmental delays, but no neurological problems.

And the various therapists and therapy clinics have gone through some standardized skill, language and activity tests, which I’ll tell you more about later, but which all indicate developmental delays.

We have also had his hearing tested – as the doctors and therapists want to rule out any kind of hearing problem as a cause for his speech/language/cognition delays. His hearing is toward the low end of normal, but still within the normal range, and the audiologist concluded that hearing is not a contributing factor to a language delay.

What does this mean for his future?
We don’t know yet. Most likely, and hopefully, with all the right therapy, his brain will mature and he will catch up and by the time he goes to school nobody will even be able to tell that he started out a little behind. It’s possible that he may always struggle a bit in school, or he may always be a little clumsy. Only time will tell.

What do the developmental tests look for, and what are his results?
Every clinic uses a different set of standardized tests. Some involve seeing what he can do in a playing environment, and some involve asking us specific questions about what kinds of things we observe that he does or doesn’t do (does he hold his bottle/cup, does he take his socks off, does he point, etc.). Some of them give us standard deviation, and some give a more useful number of an age equivalency. And for the purposes of determining which types of therapy services he needs, they look at a % of how far behind he is for his age. So for example, a 14 month old testing at an 8 month age equivalence would equal a 43% delay. Depending on which set of tests you look at, he is anywhere from 4 – 8 months behind in the major developmental areas that they look at, or a range of 26% - 53% behind. Anything more than 25% qualifies as delayed.

Here are some of the recent results across the different developmental areas, based on two different tests that were done at 14 months and 15 months:

Gross motor skills: This is things like crawling, standing, walking.
At 14 months old he tested at an 8 month age equivalent.

Fine motor skills: This is more about using your hands – holding things in both hands, pincer grasp, etc.
At 14 months old he tested at an 8 month age equivalent.

Cognitive: This is about understanding the world around you, including language, what objects are for, problem solving. There’s a lot of overlap here with the language development, fine motor and adaptive.
At 14 months he tested at a 10 month level. A different test at 15 months showed him at an 11 month level.

Receptive language: The ability to understand what is said to you.
At 15 months old he tested at a 7 month level.

Expressive language: The ability to communicate – with gestures, words, etc.
At 15 months old he tested at a 10 month level. The other test at 14 months put his speech development at an 8 month level – I think that one was a combination of receptive and expressive.

Self help/adaptive: This includes things like self-feeding, dressing, participating in one’s self-care.
At 14 months old he tested at an 8 month level. At 15 months old he tested at an 11 month level. I’m not sure that he’s made 3 months of progress in one month, I think this is more of a difference between the two different tests.

Social: The ability to play with family members and other children.
The test at 14 months said he was on target for age, but the different test at 15 months put him at a 9 month level. You can see how the tests really vary. The first test didn’t really ask us how he interacted with other kids.

So you can by all of the above, that he is more than 25% behind in all of the key areas – therefore his delay is called “global”.

What does that all really mean? What does Danny do? What does he not do that he should be doing?
Danny is crawling, going from sitting to tummy and tummy to sitting, and pulling up to stand and he’s just starting to “cruise” (taking steps along the furniture). But he still does not roll over, he does not walk. He doesn’t climb or get down from places (like the couch). He feeds himself finger food pretty well and holds his own bottle or sippy cup, but he does not use a spoon to feed himself (he will put a loaded spoon in his mouth, but does not understand to put the spoon to the bowl to get food on it). He does not attempt to draw, or stack blocks. He does not hold out his arms or legs to help you dress him. He does not try to take his shoes or socks off (although he has recently started playing with his shoes and pulling at them).

Danny doesn’t seem to understand most of what is said to him. He responds to his name, and sometimes seems to respond to “no”, but he does not look for a person or object when asked. He will recognize a desired toy from across the room and crawl to get it, but he won’t point to it or respond if you name it. He does not follow simple comments (“go get ___”). He will not hand you an object that he’s holding (if you ask if you can have it – he doesn’t seem to understand that). He does not wave bye-bye, and he does not use any other words or gestures to communicate. He does not have any way of communicating what he wants other than crying, he does not raise his arms to ask to be picked up, or point at or gesture toward something he wants. He does babble a lot, mostly simple vowel sounds and a few consonant sounds. And he has recently starting proactively playing peekaboo with us, which is very fun.

What are we doing to help him?
We are getting Danny enrolled in an Early Intervention program, also sometimes called “birth to three” program. These are programs that are mandated and regulated by the state (every state has them), because research has shown that early intervention results in significantly improved outcomes when kids go to school. Getting him in a program like this, rather than just making appointments with individual doctors and therapists, means that there will be a team of therapists and doctors looking at his development, discussing it as a team, and he’ll get a more complete evaluation of how he’s doing. In this program he’ll be getting a variety of therapies to help him catch up in the various areas that he’s behind. This program covers kids up until age three, and after age three if he still needs help then he’ll get it either through the school district, or private therapies, or maybe a combination of the two.

I don’t have the complete plan yet, but his program will include some combination of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and teaching. The center we are enrolling him in provides all of these services, and they have an on-site preschool, and it’s just 4 blocks away from our house. The preschool starts at age 18 months, so we have a couple of months before he gets to go there. In the mean time, we will get home visits from the teacher and/or therapists. Probably weekly, although we’re not sure of the schedule yet.

We’ve already gone ahead and gotten him started with physical therapy at Swedish Hospital, as it is taking a while to get the full early intervention program coordinated and we had opportunity to get him in for PT so we decided not to wait.

Once he’s old enough to go to school, that will be 2 days a week for 2 hours a day. Callie gets to go too – as they like to have “typical” kids in the class, they think it will be good for Danny to have his sister there with him, and it will be a great environment for her to learn too. Being in the school environment with other kids will help him with some of his social delay, help him be more comfortable in social situations. He will continue his other therapies as well, but at this point it will happen at the center, either in class or separately depending on what he needs. I’ll tell you more about the school as we get closer to starting that.

The basic idea with all of this is to get a variety of therapy to help him develop in the areas that he is behind, and hopefully help him catch up more quickly. And we’ll have regular follow-ups with the various doctors to assess his progress.

Ok, I know you’re thinking that I’ve avoided one obvious question – what about Autism?
We don’t know. 15 months is too young to diagnose autism. This usually isn’t diagnosed until around age 3. Although they are now thinking that there are some early indicators that can help doctors and therapists diagnose, and therefore treat it, earlier. And so far we’ve been told by everyone that he does not exhibit any of the early signs of autism. He makes great eye contact, he smiles, he laughs, he interacts with us and he does babble with some sounds. These are the things that a child with early signs for autism would not be doing. So that is a relief for now. And this is certainly something that we, and all of his doctors and therapists, will be watching very closely for as he gets older.

How are we feeling about all of this, as his parents?
It’s frustrating that nobody can tell us why. Jim and I are problem solvers – tell us the problem, and we will do whatever it takes to fix it. It’s hard to have such a vague diagnosis and to not have any real answer for why Daniel is delayed. But, beyond that, we’re feeling pretty good about where we are at. We are very glad that we have pursued the avenues that we have pursued – that we took him to all the right people, got all the bad things ruled out that can be ruled out for now, and that we are aggressively getting him the early intervention therapies that he needs. We feel confident that we are doing everything we can do for him. And it’s really important to note that he is making progress, even if it’s a little slower than everyone would like to see.

And in the mean time, he is happy and healthy and he is the most unbelievable joy to be around. We can’t ask for anything more.

Did I answer all your questions?
If not, feel free to ask me more and I’ll answer what I can. Leave a comment, send us an email, or give us a call. We’re talking about this now. And I promise to be more open about it moving forward.

input please - how to answer this question that I've avoided

2009-01-08T11:17:00.001-08:00

My dad asked in an email recently if I would tell him more about how I got pregnant. My dad and I don't have the closest relationship. He would like it to be a lot closer, but I've always put up walls between us for various reasons.

Here's what he asked:

"Don't know if I should bring this up but guess I will anyway. If you ever feel comfortable sharing the whole process of getting pregnant with me I would love to hear it from you. I've only gotten bits and pieces. It's not relevant to anything particular just think those things should be shared between parents and children."

I've never outright lied about our infertility to anyone, I've just avoided the subject and avoided the questions. But since he asked directly I feel like I need to give him some kind of answer.

Here's the email I've written in response. Please tell me what you think. I'm struggling with the right balance of what to say.

I obviously ignored your question about getting pregnant. It's a very sensitive subject.

We did IVF. Many times over several years, after trying on our own for quite a while.

It was heartbreaking and emotionally painful roller coaster. It was depressing time of my life, and mostly just very sad. It's not easy to face the fact that your body doesn't work the way it should, and incredibly heartbreaking to be told that you may never have a child of your own. Especially when being a mother was the one and only thing that I've always known my entire life that I wanted. I've never failed at anything in my entire life, I've always accomplished everything I set my mind to, but this I couldn't accomplish and that was really hard for me to take.

Fertility science is still a lot of guessing. It took many tries to get the program just right so that my body would respond. We considered other options at various times throughout the process, but we weren't quite ready to give up yet. Obviously it eventually worked.

I didn't, and don't, talk about it because it was/is too emotional, and also because we feel that the process of making babies is something private between a husband and wife, no matter how it happens. Most people don't have to tell the details of how they get pregnant, because it happens privately in their bedroom. Mom knows some of it, but not much of the detail.

Ask me questions if you want. I might answer them, I might not. I hope you understand. Even now just thinking about it brings back a lot of sadness that I'd rather leave behind me. My life is so happy now.

updates and happy new year

2009-01-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

Hiya. Sorry I've been away.

I'd say I'd been busy with the hectic holidays and such, but in reality our holidays were the opposite of hectic. It was quiet and mellow and we did lots of sitting around, hanging out, playing with babies, having family time. It was perfect. So I suppose my excuse for not blogging was that I was spending time with my family, not in front of the computer.

Lots to update on Danny, but I'll safe that for another post in detail. The short version is that we're moving forward with early intervention, more testing, and working on a schedule for lots of therapy. But in the mean time - he has started pulling himself to standing, which nearly brought tears to my eyes. And he's even managed a little bit of 'cruising' - he'll take few very wobbly steps along the couch to reach a coveted toy.

Both babies are a little sick now. And as the bad mother that I am, I didn't even notice it. The pediatrician pointed it out at their 15 months checkup yesterday. They have some kind of little virus that causes painful sores in their mouths. I thought they were teething - didn't want their mouths messed with, little bit of a fever, fussy, not much appetite. But no, they have sores (she called them ulcers) in their mouths. There's no treatment other than lots of fluids and let it run its course. Poor little guys. Danny's mouth is so swollen it looks like his teeth have receded halfway back into his gums. How I didn't notice this I'm not sure.

We are weaned. The babies have weaned me. I hear so many stories of moms deciding to wean their baby, and the baby tugging at the shirt and crying, wanting to nurse. But for us it's the opposite. These poor critters keep getting boobs shoved in their faces, boobs that they have no interest in any more. So it's them telling me no, rather than me having to tell them no. I guess maybe that makes it easier? Certainly easier for them, but I'm not sure if it's easier for me. It feels sad. Callie had been nursing once a day the last few weeks, just for a few minutes. But with this little sore mouth business she has not been interested at all. So I guess I've accepted the fact that it's over. I'm consoling myself with the thought that my breastfeeding days are not completely over, just over for now...

In fertility and baby making news... I just hung up the phone with the fertility clinic, and made an appointment for Feb 11th to go meet with the RE and talk about using up a couple of our frozen embryos. Funny thing is, as much as I've talked about wanting to do this, making the call made me very, very nervous. The last time I remember this kind of nervous feeling was the day I went to hospital for my C-section. It's wierd. I'm not sure why I'm nervous. Or maybe it's nervous excitement. But then there's the little questioning in the back of the head of am I crazy, is this the right thing to do, am I getting greedy and won't have it so easy the next time, etc., etc.

and in 'packing on the pounds because it's the holidays news'. I've gained a whopping 7 pounds. shit! I have been living the live of sloth and gluttony this past month or so. Figuring it was the holidays so it was ok to indulge. But man the pounds came on so easy and quickly. And as I am determined to never again weigh what I weighed before, I am now trying to be very careful about what I eat. I want to give those 7 back and not see them again until I am pregnant. I think it's mostly the snacking that got me, so snack time is over for me.

many more rambling thougths in my head. but that's enough for now. back at you later.

twittering times two isn't working

2008-12-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that I have two blogs - two personas. On this blog I talk about more personal things, my IF, my more private thougths. And on my other blog I post photos of my babies and happy milestones for friends and family.

I had tried to also have a separate Twitter account for each of those personas. But it just wasn't working - I can hardly manage to twitter on a single account, doing it twice was silly.

So - I will no longer be using my 'Whatifthis' Twitter account - only my other one. I've already added a few of you. But if you want to continue following my twitters (and I am trying to do it more regularly now), send me an email and I'll tell you the name so you can follow me. Assuming I know who you are, that is.

Good day, an happy twittering.

:-)

the meaning of Christmas?

2008-12-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

I'm struggling a bit with the holiday this year.

We are not religious. I guess I'd say that I believe in some kind of higher power(s), but I wouldn't specifically call myself a Christian, or any other religion. We always celebrated Christmas, but more as a family and gift-giving holiday, and not recognizing any religious meaning.

It bothers me that it has become so commercial. The meaning of the holiday now seems to be a way for the retail industry to separate consumers from their money, or further encourage them to live beyond their means and put it all on credit. I'm tired of the expectation created by society that we need to give gifts to everyone, that it's "sad" if a child doesn't get a whole pile of new toys for Christmas. When I tell her that we're really not into buying presents for each other this year, my mother is constantly insisting that everyone "needs something to open" on Christmas.

I don't want that. I don't want people expecting gifts from me. I don't want people thinking I expect gifts from them. I really don't want my children learning to expect a big pile of presents.

But without either of these now 'traditional' meanings of Christmas - either giving gifts, or a religious signficance - what should Christmas be for our family? What should it mean to me, or what should I teach my children about it?

What do you do?

almost done

2008-12-09T11:25:00.001-08:00

I guess we're almost done nursing.

As I've mentioned before, Danny weaned himself about a month ago. He has still been getting breast milk via bottles - slowly working through our freezer stash with one BM bottle per day from the nanny, and a few extra ounces a day that I have been pumping. But I think I'm basically done pumping, I've only been managing to do it once a day lately, and the 3 ounces that I get doesn't really seem worth it. And the freezer stash is just about gone. So his days of breast milk are coming to an end.

Callie has been dropping feedings lately. She's been off her mid-day nursing for a few weeks, which was my plan - to transition her to one bottle a day in the afternoon. My plan had been to keep nursing morning and night for longer, really as long as she wanted. But the last several nights she has asked for a bottle instead of wanting to nurse. And her morning nursing sessions have gotten pretty short. So she may be nearing weaning herself. I can't really tell. Or maybe just the stuffy nose she has right now is influencing her desire to suck and maybe maybe she'll come back when she's over her cold.

It's strange really - I guess I always figured that it would be me deciding to wean them. I never really thought about the idea that they would make the decision. This is better for them I guess, to do it on their time vs any trauma of me not letting them nurse when they want to. So I guess it is good that they get to decide for themselves.

But I'm not sure I'm mentally ready to be done nursing, and I'm not sure I'm ready for them to be done with having my milk. If they were under a year old and trying to wean I would fight it - I would assume it's just a brief nursing strike and I would keep trying to push them to get back on. But after a year old I suppose they are ok to decide this on their own.

I can't quite explain why I feel so conflicted about this. Most people seem happy to be done. I hear a lot of people say they are so glad to "have my body back". But I never really felt like it was a problem. Yes, I hated pumping, but I didn't hate nursing and I felt like it was such the right thing to do. I've always appreciated what a miracle it is to be able to nourish and grow these babies from this body of mine. The body these babies have given me is frankly so much better than the one I had before (40 pounds lighter!), that I haven't had any of that experience of wanting my old body back (except for the stretch marks I suppose).

It's so final, something that once it's done, we can't go back. There may be more babies to nurse one day, but I will never nurse these babies again - I will never again nurture them from my own body.

miscellany

2008-12-05T16:42:00.000-08:00

First – on housekeeping – or the lack of:
My blogroll and sidebar have gone to shit. I haven’t updated any of it for months and months. I have people listed as pregnant who now have babies who are almost a year old. Bad, bad me. I should delete it all and start over. Sorry for being such a slacker.

And the whole twitter thing – I’ve completely slacked on that too. I have been intending to start twittering again though. So watch for me…

Cycling, envy? Or I don’t know…
It seems that several of my former cycle/pregnancy buddies are expecting again. I am very, very happy for all of them. and a tad bit green with envy. But that’s silly. I do want to be pregnant again, but not just yet. Ok, that’s not quite right – I guess there’s a part of me that would love to be pregnant right now, but we have a plan that we’ve agreed to. Next summer. It seems a long way off. I’m trying to figure out when to put in the call to the RE. I assume the whole process will take 2 – 3 months – to get my cycle coordinated, and I’m guessing that she may have a couple month wait list for an appointment, so my plan is to call after the new year. So pregnancy is on my mind a lot. We don’t plan on telling anyone that we are trying again, the whole thing will be a big surprise. We’ve gotten a few raised eyebrows when we’ve mentioned maybe having more, so we’ve decided that the process is none of their business, and they’ll be happy for us when they find out that it’s done.

There are times when I haven’t gotten enough sleep, that I wonder whether I really do want to do this all over again. It’s usually in the evening, when I’m exhausted from the day. But most of the time, I really do want more. These guys are so much fun that most of the time I think it would be great to have a whole house full.

So tell me this, my sisters:
How on earth do you manage to have a sex life? I simply don’t have the energy. I thought for a while that it was lack of drive. But I don’t think that’s it. Because I’ll think about it at points in the day, but by the time evening comes and we are actually in the same room together, I’m completely exhausted and want nothing other than to roll over and go to sleep. I don’t know how to find the energy to be willing to exchange the sleep for intimacy.

Because I’m lazy – I am copying here for you the update that I posted on my public/family blog, edited with a few additional details about Danny that I don’t share as publicly…

We got back late Tuesday night from our annual thanksgiving trip to San Diego. It was a fun visit, it always goes by too fast. It was great to see some of our family. We missed the family that wasn’t there, but it was good to see those that were. With the way we all live such spread out lives, I'm so happy that we have the magic of the internet to keep us all together. With email and blogs and digital photos, I really don't feel that far away from my family, even though we don't see each other or actually converse all that often. It's so great how we can all stay so virtually connected - I feel like I know what goes on with everyone's lives and that's really cool.

The travelling was mostly good – with a few exceptions. On the way to the airport in Seattle, Callie threw up all over the car. But alas, with the focus on getting us pulled together and into the airport for our flight, I neglected to take my traditional barf-covered-baby photo. Sorry that Callie won't have this one for the scrap book. It was a stinky mess, we cleaned it up as best we could and then had to leave it at the airport to ferment for a week. It is off being detailed as I type this. Hopefully they can get rid of the stench. On the flight home Callie had about 15 minutes of complete melt down, but then passed out cold and slept until the next morning. Danny is a breeze to travel with, he is so mellow. Jim got the pleasure of his company for the flight (the stinker wouldn't even surrender the sweet sleeping fellow to me to hold - selfish!), and said that he has travelled in first class with seat mates that were less amiable to travel with than this guy.

We’re trying to readjust to being home. Everybody is tired, nap schedules are totally messed up. And I think the babies are in the middle of shifting their nap schedule anyway, so that always means a few weeks of unpredictable napping. Hopefully by next week we’ll be back in a more normal routine.

Updates on the babies... (when do I have to stop calling them babies?)

Callie:
Walking like she’s been doing it forever. It’s amazing what can change in just a week. She went from a few tentative steps, to now practically running. She’s totally confident walking anywhere, carrying things while walking, bending over to pick things up. So cute. I have some video which I will try to post soon. She still crawls occasionally, but it's less and less every day and I predict that we will see the last of it within the next few days probably.

Her vocabulary is really picking up. Regular words and phrases include: hi dad, hi danny, hello, dog, daisy (mom’s dog), Harley (the name of our nanny’s dog). And I’ve occasionally heard her say all done and baby, and while we were in San Diego she even said Tabatha once. All people (except Danny) are callled Dad. She calls me dad, and the nanny. I think I got her to try saying Ian a couple times last night, but it's hard to tell. She has a small vocabulary of sign words too – all done, more, sleep, please, no. She loves to shake her head no to everything - she'll even tell Danny no if he does something she thinks it's not supposed to. She will definitely be the bossy sister. She pats her chest when you spell her name. Jim has been doing this for a while - spelling her name and pointing to her, and now she totally gets when you're spelling her name.

She gives hugs and kisses - so lovable. She is very interested in a little baby doll - it's the funniest little genetic girl thing I guess, you give her a doll, or talk to her about a baby, and her voice changes to this very soft little tone. We didn't teach her that.

We had been working on going on the potty before we left – we hadn’t really intended to potty train so early, but she seemed interested so we went for it. But I think the interruption of the vacation has been too much of a distraction, and she hasn’t gone on the potty since we’ve been back. So I don’t know if we missed our little window there or not.

Her favorite food is soup. She loves to slurp broth from a spoon. If she knows you’re eating soup, she will get all worked up until she gets some, and she will not let you stop feeding it to her until she’s full. She goes crazy for soup. Last night I ended up putting broth in a bowl for her to drink out of, because my speed at refilling the soup spoon was not meeting with her satisfaction.

Danny:
Our little slowpoke is catching up! He is crawling like a super star – he even has a funny little high speed crawl that looks like a cartoon baby. He sits up and gets down great. He is starting to show interest in putting objects on or in things, taking off his shoes and socks, and pulling up to standing. He loves to pull up on his knees, and loves to be standing if you help him. He’ll even stand and stomp one foot if he has some support for holding on.

He seems to have a little bit of a cold today – a very runny nose. But otherwise he seems to feel ok.

His newest favorite food is peas. This is funny if you know me – I am not a picky eater at all, but peas are one of the very few things that I don’t like. And my kid loves them. Ah well, for him I will cook peas. That's how much I love him.

: Even though he’s making great progress, he’s obviously still way behind. He still has very little language skills or comprehension, doesn’t roll over, and doesn’t do a lot of fine motor things. I’d say he’s still at least 4 months behind, probably more in some areas. We have an appointment at our house on Monday with a nurse from the local clinic that is part of the early intervention program – everybody seems to want to do their own evaluation – who will then decide if he qualifies for their services. If he qualifies, then we may switch his PT to them and I think they’d add some OT and ST. If they don’t take him, then we’ll continue with his PT that our insurance covers and find out whether we need to add OT, and he has an appointment at that clinic for a speech eval in January. He also has an appointment in a couple weeks for a hearing test, and we still have the long awaited appointment with the neurologist next week.

Sleeping:
We recognize that we have very little room to complain - because with only occasional exceptions our babies have been sleeping through the night since they were three months old - but lately we have been struggling to get enough sleep. They used to sleep from about 8:30pm to sometime between 7:30am - 8:30am. But lately they've been waking up earlier, almost always by 6:30, often 6:00, and sometimes even a little before 6:00. That last 60 - 90 minutes of sleep we were getting in the mornings is sorely missed. Losing one hour may not seem like much, but over time it does seem to add up.

Regarding Christmas:
It's going to be low key for us this year. The last couple years we've had Christmas dinners with our friends Mimi and Michael and their kids. But they have gone and left us and moved to Australia. :-( So we have no plans for Christmas this year - I guess a very mellow day with the kids, hopefully spend a little time with Ian and/or Sean, and I don't really know what else. Maybe we'll make Christmas dinner, maybe not. we'll see. We're planning on going pretty light with the gifting this year too - mostly because there's very little either of us or the babies really need, and we're not inclined to buy gifts just for the sake of buying gifts. I have gotten a little annoyed at the excessive commercialization and emphasis on shopping, and I feel a little like rebelling against it. And, even though our incomes feel pretty stable right now, it just doesn't feel like the best time to be spending a bunch of money that we don't really need to spend. I am going to try to get a card out, just as soon as we get a family photo taken. We'll get a very tiny Christmas tree that will fit up on a table out of the reach of the small people who think that everything belongs to them and will stop at nothing to disassemble a shiny object.

Work updates:
Jim has started a new job. Still at , just a different role with more responsibility and (he's hoping) better opportunity for growth and promotions. I'd explain to you what the job is, but I seem to struggle with articulating (or understanding) exactly what it is that he does. Technical, brainy stuff. :-)

My work is going very well - I am really enjoying the consulting lifestyle. I love the flexibility of being able to work wherever I want, and also taking breaks to spend time with the kids during the day. The projects I am working on right now are interesting (working on mobile phones stuff - very cool). It's turning out to be the perfect balance. Consulting isn't quite the same job security as being a full time employee, but my current contract has just been extended through June, so things are looking fairly stable for the near term.

I think that's all I have to say for now.

is it starve the fever, or feed it? I can't remember

2008-11-19T11:28:00.001-08:00

that old saying, how does it go? Starve a fever, feed a cold? or Starve a cold, feed a fever?

I'm finally coming down with that cold that I thought I was successfully fighting up for the last couple weeks. And I'm sure hungry today. Since I'm still nursing I can't really take anything, so I'm just trying to hydrate, drink tea, etc. Any suggestions other non-medicated remedies that work well for you would be most welcome.

In unrelated news...

Yesterday was Danny's appointment at the developmental clinic at Children's Hospital. We were a little underwhelmed. I guess based on what our pedi said, we were expecting a more thorough evaluation. But basically they did a pretty similar eval to what our PT had already done, and pronounced that yes, he is developmentally delayed. But pretty sure we already knew that. They don't believe there is any medical reason or underlying cause - so I guess that's good news. And while we certainly don't want there to be anything wrong with our kid, it is a little frustrating to not have an explanation for why he is delayed. But I think we've exhausted our resources for answering that question. Everyone agrees that he is a healthy, normal kid, who is just developmentally behind and should do just fine with the right combination of therapies.

They recommended that we get him in to the 0-3 program, or early intervention. There is a clinic very near our house that is very highly thought of for this - he'll probably quality for a combination of PT, OT and ST. We could choose to stick with our current PT and just get him the extra stuff at this other clinic, or we could move the whole thing to them. I guess we'll talk to them and see what they say. There may also be an option to have them come to our house, which could be nice. I have no idea how long this will go on, he's quite behind in terms of gross motor, fine motor and verbal skills, so he may need therapy for a long time. Or he may just all of a sudden catch up. Only time will tell.

does this make me a bad mother?

2008-11-17T10:35:00.001-08:00

would a good mother prioritize taking this photo - instead of getting her poor kid out of the seat ASAP?

Apologies for the shit quality picture - it was taken with my phone (which is new as supposedly has a great quality camera, but I have yet to figure out how to take 'great quality' pictures with it). anyway....

Poor little Danny was awake most of friday night, crying and obiously not feeling well. We weren't sure what was wrong, we had spent the night on our boat, and we weren't sure if it was the unfamiliar environment, or the fact that I forgot his blankie and dog at home, or if he was sick or what. Until on our way home mid-day Saturday, we heard that tell-tale wet burp sound that always precedes his barfing. And we both look back in the mirror just in time to see him spew what seems like a liter or more of barf - it came in about 4 or 5 geysers. His carseat was literally full of barf. And it was all over the seat of the car (yes, the new car) which fortunately was covered by one of those protective mats, but some of it still got out and onto the seat and the door sill. I'm not sure I've ever seen so much barf.

And of course, bad mother that I am, I had to take a picture. It's easiest in this situation to just unlatch the carseat and set it in the driveway, and then slowly try to peel him out of the barfy clothes and the seat. gross.

Fortunately we were just about a quarter mile from home when it happened. What do you do if this happens when you're on a long road trip? We were pondering this the rest of the weekend. what if we had been halfway across the mountains to grandma's house? I guess you'd have to just clean it up as best you can and put the poor baby back in a barf soaked seat. yuck.

He was obviously feeling off the rest of the weekend, and had a bit of a fever, but only barfed the once. He seems to be feeling much better today.

In other news... Callie pooped in the potty 5 times this weekend. I really had no intention of potty training this early, but she's just sort of doing it. She gets a huge kick out of sitting on her little potty while I go to the bathroom. So all weekend long I pretty much just took her in the bathroom with me when I had to go. And about 75% of the time she went too. So I guess maybe she's potty training herself. wow.

news!

2008-11-10T15:18:00.001-08:00

grrr. My nanny is a no-show again today. This time her car broke down. She called at 8am and said she was on the side of the road waiting for a tow. I haven't heard from her since. She has more crises than anybody I know. Not sure what to do about it. She's great with the kids, but a little unreliable.

So I'm busy being super mom today. Got all the laundry & dishes done while they're napping; everybody fed lunch and cleaned up, dressed; play time in the play room; all the while checking my email and trying to keep on top of things - fortunately work is very quiet today; got myself showered, pumped twice. I don't know what I would do if I had a job where I was expected to show up every day - I guess we'd have to get a different nanny.

Yes - I'm pumping again. Trying to do it 3 times a day, so that Danny can have breastmillk in a bottle. He's definitely done nursing. But I feel like he deserves to have BM for as long as Callie is still nursing, so I'm back to pumping. A bit of a drag, but feels like the right thing to do. On a related note, Callie is now refusing to take a bottle of milk. She will drink water or juice out of a bottle, but won't drink milk. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of milk it is. A strange development after 13 months of drinking bottles of milk every day. She just looks at it and shakes her head no.

Big news - Danny is crawling!! He's very tentative at it, and will still get down on his tummy to scoot when he really wants to move fast - but still, he's trying. He did it first at PT on thursday, I thought I was going to cry, it made me so happy. And he's pulling up on his knees, and he's going from sitting to his tummy, and tummy to sitting. Huge progress and big milestones in just a few days.

Probably because we have an appointment next week at Children's Hospital to have him evaluated.

And the biggest news of all – my sister had her baby last night! It was a very traumatic and long day. They were at a farmers market in the middle of the day, and a big wind came up and blew one of those portable tent/awning things over – it hit her in the face and knocked her down really hard. So they rushed her to the hospital – face bleeding badly and pelvic pain. They had her back and forth between L&D and the ER a few times – monitoring the baby and stitching up her face – 13 stitches on her forehead, and a staple in the top of her head. Her arm was badly bruised, but they x-rayed and not broken. And her pelvic ligament was separated (they thought broken, but it wasn’t). The baby’s heart rate was fine the whole time and she was having some mild contractions. But her pelvis was hurting so bad that they decided eventually to take her for an x-ray to see if it was broken, and after they x-ray when they put her back on the monitor she was then having huge contractions really close together, they checked her cervix and she was 90% effaced, and she was leaking fluid. She wasn’t even feeling the contractions because her pelvis hurt so bad. The baby was breech so they rushed her in for an emergency c-section. And Tabatha Lynn was born around 8pm. 6 pounds 1 ounce, 19 and ¾ inches long. Everybody is doing fine today, Callie is feeling much better and very happy to have it all over with. I felt so bad for her yesterday, we had just talked a few days ago about what she wanted for the birth and I told her that it doesn’t always go as you plan, so you have to just go with the flow. Well I couldn’t have imagined that it would have gone like that. But she was in really good spirits this morning about the whole thing. I’m so excited to see them in just a few weeks.

...TTFN

weaning and whining

2008-11-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks everyone for your nice comments about my issue with my mother. I'm sure she doesn't intend any kind of cruelty, I think she just thinks it cute and I'm she has no idea that it bothers me. I’m not sure yet whether I'll say anything or not, but your support is very helpful.

new topic...

I'm really struggling with the subject of weaning. My goal had been to nurse for a year, and I made that goal, which I am incredibly proud of. It wasn't always easy but I felt very strongly that it was absolutely the best for them, and so I was willing to do whatever it took. Hardship for me didn't matter - I wanted them to have the best and I strongly believe that breastmilk is best. I didn't really have a goal or a plan beyond the year, I figured I would figure that out when the time came, but I also knew that I never intended to abruptly wean. The babies have slowly been dropping feedings on their own, so I never had to work to drop any nursing sessions, it's been pretty easy so far. We're recently down to three nursings a day, most days. My thought lately had been that we could continue with morning and evening feedings for a while, wean off the daytime feeding soon.

But - I think Daniel is weaning himself. It's more and more of a struggle to get him interested in nursing. He squirms and arches, gets distracted, wants to grab at my hair and face and glasses, sometimes bites, and more and more lately he just flat out refuses. I think he's telling me that he's over it. 13 and a half months is not bad, but I had ideas of going longer. I didn't really think that he would be the one to decide when it was over - I thought that I would gradually wean him, rather than him weaning himself. There are times when this feels like rejection. I struggle with whether to keep trying, or to just decide that it's over and let it go. I think if I quit nursing him today he wouldn't miss it. That makes me a little sad, to think that it might be over, that I might never nurse my little boy again. I didn't know that this coming to an end would make me emotional, but it is.

There are definitely days where I feel ready to be done with having someone or something attached to my boobs, or at least ready to take a break from it (except that you can't just take a week off and expect to go back). I also feel like I spent so much time trying to make sure that they got nothing but breast milk, that it seems strange to give them something else. Even though I know that's what everybody does, it just seems so foreign. I am giving them some bottles of soy milk now, as I'm not pumping enough to fully supply their needs when I'm not home, but every time I do it I feel like I'm giving them something very foreign.

I have given them a bit of cows milk - but we very quickly realized that it makes Daniel really constipated, so bad idea. I do add a little cream into stuff for extra fat, but for now we're staying away from drinking straight cows milk. I've tried other milks (oat, almond, rice, etc.), they were ok but don't have much nutritional value. So we've been doing some soy milk with a little cream added, and usually mixed with a breast milk - sometimes 50/50, sometimes less BM if I haven't been able to pump much. (although there's this nagging concern about too much soy not being healthy, especially with boys - but I'm not sure what to do about that - I'm not going to give him cows milk and make him all miserable and constipated, that's not worth it). I can keep pumping and give him all the pumped milk so that at least he's getting some - but probably I need to stop that at some point. How long to people keep pumping for? And my pumping output has been in the toilet these days - the old boobs just aren't responding to the pump very well. And it seems a little silly to do much to try to increase my supply 13 months in.

It's funny really, this seems to be one of the first times I've really struggled with a decision when it comes to these babies. Everything else has come pretty naturally and it was pretty easy to determine what was the right thing to do. But now I don't know - keep trying to nurse? transition full time to bottles? bottles of what? and then there's the whole bottle thing - because some people will tell you to start weaning off the bottle at one year - but my guys are only interested in drinking water from a sippy cup.

ok, rambling, whining, confused. Perhaps the answer is there but I'm just not ready to accept it.
Oh, and for what it's worth - Callie on the other hand is more interested in the boobs than ever. She will nurse as often as I let her, she has started asking to nurse a lot. So I guess I could keep nursing her and just let him have bottles. But what in the bottle? and the circles start again...

insecurity

2008-11-04T12:35:00.003-08:00

ok, tiny vent...

My mother refers to my kids as her babies. Every day she asks "how are my babies?".

Is it silly that this bothers me?

I wonder if it would bother me if we had not gone the route we did to conceive them. I think there's a little insecure place in the back of my head that feels like she's saying that they aren't really mine, that every day she is rubbing it in and reminding me that they aren't really mine.

I corrected her once and I think she got offended. I said "you know they're actually my babies, don't you?". and she said "what makes you think that?" and I said "oh, I don't know, giving birth to them maybe". And that was a mistake because now I think she says it more often just to try to get a reaction out of me. I guess she just thinks it's funny, and it probably never occurs to her that it raises this insecurity in me every day, and reminds me every day that in some way they aren't actually "mine".

Should I tell her how it makes me feel? or should I just let it go?

Good Morning

2008-11-01T10:21:00.001-07:00

more details: cars, therapies, kids

2008-10-28T12:35:00.001-07:00

It's pretty funny actually, that my brief post about the minivan generated more comments than any post I've done in a while. I guess we all feel pretty strongly about it - I'm glad to hear that there are so many of you that feel the same way I do. I'm not alone in my hatred for minivans. I'll drive it - but that does not mean I am becoming a minivan driving soccer mom. (no soccer!)

We have been very anti minivan for a long time. We swore up and down that we would never do it. But... we've really been feeling crunched in my honda accord. Once we have the babies, diaper bag, stroller and any other gear in the car, there's literally no room for anything else. Last time we went on a weekend road trip we ended up having to borrow a friend's van - there's no way we could fit a double stroller and two porta-cribs in our car. And forget about ever having another passenger in the car with us - so anytime we had any other family in town, we had to go everywhere with two cars. Any time I need to go shopping I have to take the double stroller out of the car, to make room for groceries, huge boxes of diapers, etc.

Our plan had been to buy a Honda Pilot or a Toyota Highlander - a mid-size SUV with a third row seat. We went to look at them, liked them a lot - but the salesman gently suggested that we might want to have a look at the van - that it was made for people like us. We're thinking - "no, not people like us. we're not minivan people!". So, ok, "we'll look at it just for comparison". And darn it - we looked at the thing and basically realized we had no choice. The thing has so much more space. We had to go for a drink after - just to let the sinking reality soak in. More cargo space, more seating, more flexibility - and less expensive. Really the only reason we could come up with for not buying it was that it was so not cool - and that's a hard justification to hold up. so we caved. oh well. Some day I will buy a convertible sports car. I told my husband I wouldn't blame him if he felt like he needed to buy a motorcycle. He thought maybe just another electric guitar might do the job for now (note: he already has 6).

The reason for the minivan became even more clear after a conversation we had over dinner two weeks ago (on my 38th birthday). The conversation about having more kids. Frankly I was surprised - I thought he'd push back. We were talking about how amazing our kids are, and I said that I really did want to have more. He immediately totally agreed. I was shocked! Then I said that I debated whether we would transfer one or two again. And he immediately said that he would totally transfer two! We could have twins again - and he'd be really excited about it (so would I!). Crazy maybe - but we both think these twins are so much fun. We agreed that 2.5 - 3 years is a good separation. So we will try next summer. Wow. I'm excited.

But with 3 or 4 kids - you have to have a minivan. So the decision was made. And here we are - minivan owners. At least we got a really nice one - leather, Nav, DVD, etc. So I can console myself with gadgets.

Now - on to more important things, that don't involve bruising my self image...

We took Danny to the pediatrician yesterday. Net - she doesn't think we're over reacting, she agrees there is reason to be concerned about his development. He is behind physically, and verbally. She does not think there's anything medically wrong with him (metabolic, etc.), she thinks he's medically healthy, he's a thin kid but she's not terribly worried about his weight - but she did think it was prudent to go ahead do some thorough blood work to rule out anything obscure - genetic, chromosomal, metabolic, etc. She took a bunch of blood to send through a variety of tests. He gained a half pound in the last 4 weeks, so he appears to be gaining weight ok right now.

She felt that we were on the right track with the neurology appointment - we have that appointment in December, we discussed whether there was someplace else we could get in sooner, but she really feels that this doc is the one we should see. We've got him in the weekly physical therapy in the mean time, so we're addressing some of the treatment already, even while we're waiting for whether there's a 'diagnosis'. She also thought it was a good idea to go ahead and get some speech therapy started as well - as he should be doing more with language at this age. Fortunately that's the same place as the PT, so we'll try to get an appointment at the same time as the PT.

And finally - she thought we should go ahead and start the process to get him in to the Developmental program at Children's Hospital. It's a full eval by a team, including a developmental pediatrician, and then follow up therapies as needed. Sounds like that's a long process to get in - our pediatrician has to do a bunch of paperwork to get him in the system and get the process going, and it takes a few months to get in. But it's a good program and worth the wait. And in the mean time we are doing the PT and getting the ST going.

So we feel ok with where we are at for now. We may not get any diagnosis from the neurologist - he may just be behind for no reason that we'll ever know. The pedi said that she sees plenty of cases like that - where a child is behind with no clear diagnosis, but with the right therapies he catches up and by age 5 you'd never know that he had been behind. So we'd be ok with that. And we continue to feel so fortunate that we have insurance that allows us to get him all this therapy without having to worry about cost.

that's what I've got for now.

and I feel the need to add, in case anyone wonders... if we found out that something really serious was wrong with him, then we would absolutely revisit our decision to try for more. If we end up in a place where he is going to need a lot of extra care, treatments, attention, then I certainly would never jeopardize his needs by adding more kids in to the mix. But that is almost a year away, so we have time to really get to the bottom of what's going on with him before we pass the point of no return on more kids.

humiliation

2008-10-27T14:09:00.001-07:00

We bought a minivan. I don't even really want to talk about it.

only more questions

2008-10-21T10:23:00.001-07:00

We didn't get the easy answer we were hoping for.

Danny doesn't have any allergies.

The allergy doctor was great. He was very gentle and thoughtful. He spent a ton of time talking to us about his thoughts and where he would suggest we look next. He gave us a lot of very thoughtful input on his perspective both as a parent and a physician. He told us even before the testing that he didn’t think the problem was allergies, but he would go ahead and test just to rule it out. He thinks maybe some kind of metabolic disorder and that we should have the pediatrician do a ‘failure to thrive’ workup on him. He offered to help us in any way he could, if we don’t get the results we want from our pediatrician.

So that's what I know for now. Next step is back to the pediatrician.

worry

2008-10-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Danny has an appointment for allergy testing. It sounds strange to say, but we're really hoping they find something. That, at least, would be answer. Answers we can deal with. We think there's at least something with the dairy - a few days off dairy and the constipation that has plagued him his entire life has completely gone away. Gone. In fact, it's quite the opposite now. Very loose poops 2 - 4 times a day. In fact so much so that now I'm wondering if something else he's eating is causing that, now that the dairy isn't there to stop it up.

But mostly we're wondering if something in his diet is affecting his brain.

We're problem/solution type people. Present us with a clear cut problem, and both can tackle it head on. If they tell us that nothing in his diet is slowing him down, then we're going to have to keep digging for other answers. We have an appointment with a neurologist, but we can't get in until december. His PT doesn't think he has a neurological problem, but we're not sure. We just want an answer. This ambiguity is so hard. Why is our child so skinny and pale? Why does he not use his left leg when he tries to do his belly scoot / army crawl? Why did he stop gaining weight, stop progressing with motor skills and stop talking?

Yes, that last is a new realization that has us fairly worried.

At his 12 month check up a few weeks ago, the pediatrician asked us if they both make consonant sounds - da, ba, ma, etc. And we said yes, they both do. Because they both had been. But then we went home and realized - when was the last time we actually heard Danny do that? It's been a while it seems. He was doing all of that for a while, and now we realize that he quit doing it at some point. We're not sure when. I feel terrible to admit that I guess we hadn't really been paying attention. We'd been so focused on his motor skills, that we completely missed that all his verbal skills had basically gone out the window too. He's not silent. He makes long vowel sounds - ahh, ooh, uhh. He makes a high pitched scream that could send dogs running. But no actual babbling. I'm not sure when it stopped. I guess he must have been doing it at 9 months, because it didn't come up as an issue at his 9 month checkup. So sometime between 9 and 12 months he quit.

This has me worried.

so many medical professionals

2008-10-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

I occurs to me that we suddenly have a lot of medical professionals in our life. And my kids are relatively healthy. What about people who have real problems - they must have a rolodex full of doctors?

I find myself now having appointments with a pediatrician, physical therapist, osteopath, dietician, allergist, neurologist. We've also been to an orthopedic surgeon and a pediatric cardiologist, but fortunately those were hopefully one time deals and we won't have any kind of ongoing relationship with them. (Actually now that I say that, I think Danny is supposed to have a follow up with that cardiologist at some point, to have another look at that PDA. I need to find out when that's supposed to be scheduled.) That doesn't include my own internist, OB, opthamologist, dermatologist, dentist and occasional acupuncturist. And Jim's got his neurosurgeon for his back. And we haven't even started on the dentist for the kids - so add that one to the list soon.

We are fortunate to have excellent insurance. I know we are very lucky and I never take that for granted. We don't ever have to think twice about setting up an appointment with a specialist. We don't ever have to worry about the cost. It's such a burden lifted off us that I know so many people have to worry about.

But I wonder lately if it's too much. Am I going overboard by setting up these appointments for the neurologist and the allergist? Should I just leave the kid alone? I think in ours or our parents time these things would have just been left alone. "He's a little behind? He'll catch up?" "He's allergic to milk? don't worry, he'll grow out of it." Is this just normal stuff that I shouldn't worry about? Are we over exposed to the medical system?

maybe a food allergy

2008-10-09T10:49:00.001-07:00

Well my meeting with the nutritionist yesterday was very interesting and educational.

We went over our (mostly Danny's) whole history, from birth. Looking at the fact that he was born congested, had bad gas in those early months of nursing, started getting skinny around 7 or 8 months, and "stuck" (the word the PT used) developmentally around 6 or 7 months, is very prone to constipation, snores and often has a stuffy nose, etc.

It all adds up to a very high likelihood of an allergy, and more specifically a food allergy. And looking at the timing of when his weight and development issues started - right around when I started giving him lots of yogurt and cheese - it seems likely that he may be allergic to dairy. This is a whole new world of info for me, and I'm sure I'll butcher the explanation and there are many of you who much more about this than me. But here goes,briefly as I understand it...

1) It seems that when people don't properly digest the proteins in milk, there are byproducts of that digestion that get into the bloodstream and travel to the brain and can act like an opiate on the brain. Possibly affecting brain function, and therefore development. Some of this is controversial theory (based on my own internet reading since this appointment), but there is evidence to suggest it could be true. This could be a good explanation for why he was rolling over for a while and then stopped, and why his development never seemed to progress after a certain point. It was around that time that we started giving him dairy. This might also explain why he seems so 'mellow' to us sometimes - he is often content to just lay around and suck his pacifier or hold a stuffed toy. Maybe he's effectively feeling a little 'high' from the affects of the dairy on his brain.

2) It also seems that if someone is allergic (or 'sensitive') to a food, then their body would not be properly absorbing the nutrients from that food, and potentially other foods they are eating at the same time. This could be a good explanation for why he was chubby and at appropriate weight percentile at 6 months, but by 9 months his weight gain had significantly slowed, his percentile had dropped, and he was looking like a very skinny kid - it was during that time that we started giving him dairy. If this is the case - then stuffing more dairy fat in him to try to fatten him up would likely have the opposite affect.

It's not definitive, but certainly a very strong circumstantial case. I've gone ahead and made an appointment with a pediatric allergist to have him tested. That appointment is in a couple of weeks. But in the mean time I agreed with the nutritionist to take him (and therefore me, since I'm still nursing) completely off dairy. And after spending a lot of time talking with her about ideas, I think it's not going to be as hard as it may seem.

We're taking Callie off the dairy too. She does have some mild symptoms of a sensitivity (some mild excema on her cheeks which I am very interested to see if going off dairy will eliminate this), but mostly because it's easiest for me if we're all on the same diet. And the more reading I do the more I realize that non-human milk is not at all necessary for humans to consume, so I think she'll do just fine without it. She's still getting my milk, and all of the nutrients in cows milk can be easily replaced in other ways.

The thing we will miss the most is cheese. And I'm not totally clear whether we can still have other cheeses (goat cheese, buffalo mozarella, etc.), I have that on my list of follow up questions.

My concern with cutting out the diary was regarding how we make sure to replace those missing calories and fat and other good nutriends. She had a lot of great suggestions for this - including:

nut butters. There are lots of options other than peanut butter - sunflower seed butter, almond butter, cashew butter, pumpkin seed butter, etc.
there are lots of good organic 'buttery spreads'. (I think the word margerine has a negative connotation in the organic world, so they don't call them that, but it's basically like margerine, just made with all natural/organic ingredients.)
she showed me some examples of little snack foods that don't have dairy. things like these, and these.
we talked about a lot of different milk options. We will be sampling some different options like soy, almond, oat, rice and hazelnut milks and see what we like. they don't have as much fat as whole milk, but they do have all the same calcium and vitamin D.
Olive oil. Olive oil. Olive oil.
Soy yogurt. I have already been eating this, and I like it a lot. I also discovered some yogurt made from coconut milk, so we'll be trying that soon.
Cod Liver oil - a spoonful to mix in their cereal or other food. Has the omega-3 fats, vitamin D, and apparently is also very good for constipation.

I am to keep track of everything the babies eat in a diary for a few days. I will send this to her, she will do a full analysis of the nutritional content in their diet, and then we'll meet again next week to review that and talk about what might be missing and how we can add things.

She also had some interesting (and terrifying!) input about how they should be getting their food and liquids. She feels very stronly that at 1 year old children are capable of (and should be) learning to feed themselves with a spoon. She said that we should let them try to spoon feed themselves for at least 3 minutes at the beginning of every meal. It has to be regular and consistent, so they have an opportunity to learn. Oy! this sounds so messy. But she said that soon they will refuse to eat because they want to be eating independantly, and they will only want to eat finger foods, which is not a good habit for later in life. And interestingly, lately Callie has been refusing to eat anything we try to feed her - she only wants finger foods. So we'll give it a messy, messy try. Also she's not a big fan of sippy cups. She said that at 1 year old they are also ready to drink from a regular cup, and that we should be giving them the opportunity to learn this. She feels that a sippy is no different from a bottle - they still have to tip it up and suck - so there's no reason to bother with sippys and you should go straight from bottle to regular cup drinking. yikes! So we're in for some messes.

I'm sure there are lots of opinions on these subjects and I'm sure we'd get lots of different advice depending who we ask. But I felt very comfortable with her, she seems extremely experienced and knowledgeable and reasonable, so I will go with her input for now. Even if it turns out that we don't have a dairy allergy, I think we'll all be healther with this diet anyway. So there's really no downside, as long as we're diligent about replacing the nutrients in other ways.

Also a brief follow up to my earlier post: I want to be clear that I am not at all apposed to vaccinating my children. I absolutely will do it, I think it's important for them and for other children around them. I'm just beginning to believe more and more that it isn't as necessary to get it all done quite as early as the CDC has been telling us. A slightly delayed vaccination schedule is just fine, there is continually growing support for this among a lot of parents and medical professionals, as long as they've had everything they need before they go to school. My pediatrician had no concern about delaying their vaccines, as long as we catch up later. These kids aren't in day care, and presumably won't ever be. So as long as we're caught up before they go to school, I think we will be just fine.

where does the time go?

2008-10-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

I thought that by working part time I would end up with more free time to get things done. But somehow the time seems to get sucked up, and I still find myself with the same long lists of things that don't get done. I'm not sure where the time goes.

I definitely am spending more time with my kids, which is awesome and I love it. It also means that I rarely have to pump any more - I have one day a week that I'm in the office most of the day, so lately I am just pumping once a week. So nice.

And yes, I am still nursing. I feel really proud that I have made it to over a year exclusively nursing twins. I will keep doing it for a while. Especially given our new possible food allergy situation (another post about that forthcoming), I think it's even more important to keep them on breastmilk for a while longer and keep my immunity protecting them.

a lot of things

2008-10-02T10:58:00.001-07:00

First - our sailing trip was great. It was way easier than I had feared. I guess when you're used to handling twins at home, and you're used to handling a boat, then combining the two works pretty well.

I think the babies liked it, they liked the confined space, the movement, the fresh air. So many new and different things to look at. They were very engaged all day, and slept great for naps and bed time. We kept the days short - only traveled a couple hours each day - and that worked great. That way we weren't underway for more than one nap or meal cycle each day. I've posted some updates and pics on my other public blog for those of you that have the link. If you don't have it - send me an email and if I know who you are I'll send you the link.

Now... we're home and trying get settled back in. My nanny has been out sick for two days. So the plan of having her work through the mountain of laundry hasn't worked out. We're getting by, Jim and I splitting days between working and watching the kids. But the house is getting more and more disorganized by the minute. So we'll be spending the weekend trying to catch up. We love this nanny, she is great with the kids and is a huge help around the house and is very flexible. But she's a little unreliable and that's wearing on me. Not that I will give her a hard time for getting sick - that happens to everyone and that's why she has paid sick days. (although I think she doesn't take very good care of herself, but that's a whole other topic). It's just that the being out sick on top of the rest is what makes it a little annoying. The bigger problem is that she is basically never on time. Really, never. She's supposed to be here at 8:00, and she never is. 8:15 is the earliest she makes it. Some days that's no big deal. Other days it's a very big deal, if I have work to do or meetings, and I can't get my day started until she gets here. Some days she's as much as 30 or 45 minutes late. The babies generally eat breakfast around 8. So my ideal schedule that she gets here at 8 and can take over and feed them breakfast while I get myself dressed and fed. We've talked to her about it many times, every day she has an excuse. Every week she says next week she's going to try a different route, or a different morning routine. But it hasn't improved. I have felt bad giving her too hard a time about it, because she's so great in every other way, but it's getting to a point where it's really frustrating me and I think we're going have to have a serious sit down soon.

I guess there's no such thing as the perfect nanny. The last one was very prompt, but she had other issues...

Next topic...

I recently read this book, and it has me in a real quandry. It's a lot about the american diet, where our food comes from, how it's produced, etc. I've always considered myself a somewhat healthy eater. I don't eat fast food (ok, the occasional In 'n Out burger when I'm in California, but otherwise I've been totally off fast food since I read Fast Food Nation - not that I ate very much of it before that anyway), I eat very little sweets, and very little of what I would call junk food. And lately I have been trying to buy more organic. I buy mostly organic food for the babies, and as much for us as seems reasonable and affordable. But this book. man. it's got me looking at everything in my pantry and freezer as if it's got a big skull and crossbones on the label. I don't know what to eat any more. I feel like everything that's not organic is poison. And even some of the organic I've been buying isn't all that great either. I've got to totally re-think our approach to food. First step I think is that I'm going to sign up for one of these services that delivers a box of organic produce to you every week, from local organic farmers, there are a number of these in my area. And we need to be eating more veggies anyway. Second is that I think I have to stop buying my animal products (meat, eggs, etc.) from big stores (example: the organic meat and eggs and chicken I've been buying from Cost.co). It seems that just having an organic label on the meat leaves out a lot of info, and I need to know more about where my animal products are coming from (for a lot of reasons. read the book). So gotta rethink that. I could ramble about that for a long time. But I'll stop for now, and I'll update you more as I figure this thing out.

Related to diet and eating....
I have an appointment next week with a nutritionist. Specifically this is to help me look at my kids diets. Danny is still pretty under weight. At their 12 month checkup last week, he is now at the 92nd percentile for height, but down to 30th percentile for weight. He's skinny. But I think he eats pretty well. The ideas I'm getting from the doctor about adding fat to his diet are pretty much all focused on dairy - add more butter, cream and cheese to everything your kid eats. But I don't think it sounds very healthy to have your kid basically living on a totally dairy focused diet. I want him to at least have a well balanced diet, and possibly even less dairy.

The other doc we've been seeing (the one doing the cranial-sacral therapy) wants me to take them off dairy completely. She thinks it's impacting his digestion and impeding his development. She says his development will speed up when he's off dairy. I don't really understand the reasoning behind that, but I guess I'm willing to try if it will help.

So if I take him off dairy, then I MUST replace the fat for him. And so that's mostly what I need help figuring out - how to reduce the dairy without reducing (and hopefully increasing) the fat and calories. The nutritionist is next wednesday. I'm very interested to see what she has to say. I didn't go with the nutrionist that the CS doctor recommended, because she's independant and does it in her spare time. I got a name from my pedi for one who has a larger practice, and that way she is covered by our insurance.

Danny is still way behind in his develoment. And it seems to us that the gap between the two babies is getting wider and wider. Callie is more and more mobile every day, more verbal too. She seems to be understanding larger concepts more now too - like giving you something you ask for, putting things in things, understanding who and where people are, etc. Danny does none of this. He also still does not roll over, crawl or pull himself up. He can sometimes get himself on his hands and knees and rock back and forth. One time he got from his belly up to a sitting position. And he has figured a very crude kind of army crawl that gets him forward if he really wants something. But he gets frustrated so fast, and really seems to lack motivation to try.

We discussed our concerns with the pediatrician. And she suggested that if we were concerned that we should go ahead and have him evaluated by a neurologist. She gave us a reco. I've left a couple messages at his office to try to get an appointment, but no return call so far. I think he's very hard to get in with.

Given our concerns about his delayed development, we declined to get their 12 month shots. I know this is a controversial subject. I am absolutely in favor of vaccinations. But it seems like he's got enough to deal with right now, and loading down his body with a bunch of extra stuff just doesn't feel like the right thing to do. I've also been doing some reading about delaying vaccinations, and it seems like there is a lot of support for this and very little risk in delaying. So we'll pick the schedule back up in 6 - 12 months, when we feel confident that his development progress is back on track.

ok. that's enough of a brain dump for now. As the subject said - a lot of things. There's even more on my mind, but I'll save it for later.

I blinked. And a year went by.

2008-09-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

One year ago today - everything changed.

That day...

We went for an amnio in the morning, to see whether the babies lungs were mature and decide when to deliver. We had some extra time while we waited for the amnio results, so we walked a lap around the hospital complex and enjoyed the fresh air. I was nervous, excited, anxious. It was a beautiful late summer day. The air was warm, the sky was clear. I remember very clearly what the air felt like. Four days later when we left the hospital everything had changed. The color of the light was different, the air felt different, the trees had started to change color. The world had changed - in so many ways.

On September 21, 2007 my beautiful babies were born. At 12:49 and 12:50 pm. It was the happiest day of my life - and every day has just gotten better since then. This was a moment I had waited for and looked forward to for years. I've known my entire life that I wanted to be a mother. But I didn't really know what that would mean. This day changed me. Nothing matters the way it used to. Everything matters in a way it never did. It has been the happiest year of my life. I've never had so much fun or so much joy.

But it's not all about me. :-) They have had a great year. Every day is a new adventure for them. Every day they discover something new, learn something new, accomplish something new. Their faces light up when the discover something. They love to laugh and play. They have great facial expressions. They get so excited when someone they love walks in the room. They sleep great, they eat great. They understand so much! It amazes me what they get. People think kids don't understand much - but they do! It amazes me to look back at the pictures and see how much they have changed and grown. So fast!

Callie
My wish granted, my dream come true, my prayer answered. I always wanted a daughter, and I always knew I would have one. She is who I dreamt of, who I thought about, who I hoped for. When she was inside me I knew who she was, I called baby B my baby girl. I even secretly called her Callie, because I knew that would be her name. I feel like I've known her for a very long time. She is adventurous and strong. She is very energetic, but can also snuggle up so sweet when she feels like it. I think she's going to be a very brave and independant girl. She is going to discover the world and teach us things we never knew. She will be very outgoing and popular.

Danny
The greatest surprise gift anyone could ever get. I never thought about having a son, it just never crossed my mind. And so he surprised me, and what a perfect surprise he is. He is so special and so beautiful - his wonderful smile is the greatest gift every day. He is my bonus gift - you wait extra long and you get rewarded with someone extra special. He is tender and sweet and mellow. He has a wonderful sense of humor. I think he makes jokes, and he gets jokes. He is intellectual and he studies things. He's not big on the physical stuff. He will be a little hard to get to know and shy at first, but a great and loyal friend once you get inside his heart.

What I wish for them is simple:
Happiness. However that comes. I want them to be happy with who they are, where they are, what they do, who they're with. I want them to be successful - but by their own definition of success, not anybody elses. I don't care if they make a bunch of money. I care that they are comfortable and happy with who their are and with the choices they make. I want them to value education and have the opportunity to have as much of it as possible. I want them to see the world, and care about the world. I want them to love and be loved a lot.

Happy Birthday Babies!!

wish us luck

2008-09-18T10:49:00.001-07:00

We are either the craziest people in the world, or maybe the bravest? I don’t know.

Either way – we’re leaving tomorrow with the plan of spending 10 days on the sailboat with the babies. We’re not going far – just some local islands and bays in Puget Sound. Nothing more than a few hours away. We’re getting it down to the wire, but I think we’ll be ready to go tomorrow. We’ve done some last minute upgrades to plumbing and electrical, things that will hopefully make the trip a little easier and more comfortable, and hopefully those things will be finished by the time we want to leave.

I think I’ve figured out how we’re going to keep everybody contained and safe for playing and sleeping. And I think I’ve got the right amount of food and clothes for everyone (probably way too much). Hopefully the weather will cooperate – it’s always cool this time of year and that’s just fine, I’m just hoping it’s not pouring down rain.

I’ll try to send a few updates from my phone to blog. Hopefully they are fun updates – not desperate cries for help!

baby schedules

2008-09-18T10:10:00.001-07:00

I was a little baffled for a while – how do you change their schedule? I would hear that at some point they would go from 3 naps to 2, and I knew that we would eventually start eating more solids and less milk. But how? How do you know when to drop a feeding, when to feed them more or less? How do you know when to drop a nap, or change a nap time?

Turns out it’s easy actually – because they know what they want and they tell you. All you have to do is pay attention and listen to what they are telling you. And the schedules gradually shift and settle into a new pattern as you follow their cues.

Around 10 months old they started to shift to 2 naps. We would put them down for that third nap and they would just lay in there and play and talk. So once that started to seem like the consistent pattern, then we stopped trying for the third nap. I think my kids hung on to that third nap longer than most. But now that they are just taking 2 naps, the naps are usually longer. Usually. And the two naps usually start a bit later. Around 9:30 or 10:00, and then around 2:30 or so. Sometimes they still get put in their cribs later, at the time that they might have had that third nap. It’s not with the expectation that they’ll sleep, but sometimes they just seem to want a little quiet time – they get fussy, and maybe a little overstimulated. And after 20 or 30 minutes of quietly talking or playing in the crib, they seem refreshed and ready to be social again.

(but not always – the last few days I think we’re either fighting a cold or teething. Or maybe both. They’ve been ready for those naps earlier than usual).

As far as feeding goes – we are now nursing just 3 or 4 times a day. This reduction in nursing isn’t at all driven by me. I follow their cues and let them nurse when they want do. They always nurse when they wake up in the morning and before bed at night, and in the middle of the afternoon. The feeding that sometimes doesn’t happen is the mid morning one. It depends on how long their morning nap is. If they have a long nap and don’t wake until close to noon, then they go straight to lunch. Up until recently they were nursing before going down for their morning nap, but they both decided at the same time that they weren’t interested in that. They just want to go to bed. Even if we try to offer them a bottle at that time, they’re not interested. So they seem to decide for themselves how much milk they want. I think this is because we have always kept the milk/nursing as just for food – not for soothing or comforting. They’re very good at comforting themselves in other ways and I’ve never started the habit of offering to nurse them if they are upset but not hungry. So, I guess as they are eating more solid food and needing less milk for nourishment, they are naturally nursing less. Soon – after a year old when they can have whole milk – we will gradually move away from the daytime nursing, and let them have milk in cups with their meals, and we will just continue with the morning and evening nursing for a while longer.

They eat usually 4 solid meals a day – breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. It’s so easy now because they are mostly feeding themselves, and they basically eat what we eat for dinner. If we are eating something really spicy then I will make something separate for them. Also occasionally if we are eating something not very healthy (shame on us!), or very messy that I don’t feel like cleaning up. But most of the time they just get cut up pieces of whatever we’re having. We occasionally still spoon feed them mashed up veggies, because they seem to prefer their veggies that way, instead of in whole pieces. And they love getting bites off of our forks – everything tastes better from a big fork. For lunch they eat great stuff like tofu, garden burgers, cheese, beans, organic chicken – healthy stuff. Breakfast is the only meal that we regularly still spoon feed them – cereal and yogurt. They like it, and get angry if you don’t shovel it fast enough. They also have some finger food with their breakfast – either pieces of toast, or some healthy pancakes that I make (organic buckwheat, tofu, and sometimes some squash or sweet potato or apple or banana – or a combination. Sounds strange, but actually they taste very good), or scrambled egg.

So here’s the schedule (at almost 12 months old!):

· Any time between 6:00 and 7:30 – wake up and nurse

· 8:00 am – breakfast

· ~ 9:30 – nap

· 11:00 – nurse or bottle (if wake from nap early)

· 12:00 – lunch

· ~1:30 or 2:00 – nurse or bottle

· ~2:30 – nap

· 5:00 – snack

· 7:00 – dinner

· 8:30 – nurse and then bed

They still usually sleep all through the night in their own beds. We’ve had a few interrupted nights lately, I think because of teething. They have taken turns either waking up crying in the night, or waking up earlier than normal. They both have just cut through another tooth (Danny now has 7, Callie has 6). Sometimes if one wakes up a little too early for us, then we get that one in bed and we all go back to sleep. But otherwise they sleep on their own.

Ok, so that’s probably all bored you. But maybe somebody likes to know.

The slow creep. Or: I used to be a minimalist.

2008-09-12T15:26:00.001-07:00

I used to pride myself in not having a bunch of junk around my house. And I swore that when I had kids I was not going to clutter my house up with tons of kid stuff.

But the toys. They just keep on coming. I'm not sure we have that many by a lot of standards. But it seems like they are everywhere. My mother loves buying them toys. They love playing with the toys. And I will confess that I have bought a few myself. It doesn't seem like much at first, just one or two at a time. And all of a sudden my living room is full. Especially now that we are at a stage of more interactive toys, ride on toys, stand-up-at toys. They are bigger.

but I guess we're having fun with all these toys.

"you look great for having twins"

2008-09-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, so why is it that when people hear that I have twins, they "wow, you look great for having twins". I get this all the time. seriously.

What the heck does that mean?

Does it mean "I was thinking you looked terrible, but now that I know you have twins, I guess you're holding it together better than expected".

Or does it mean they think if you have twins that you should look exhausted and fat? and it's suprising because I don't look to exhausted and I'm usually somewhat put together?

And when they hear that I have twins, the first they do is look me up and down. What's up with that?

soliciting assvice

2008-09-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Two topics that spinning my brain in circles...

First...
we are planning to take two babies out for 10 days on a 38 foot sailboat. Are we nuts?

For the last several years (except last year, as I was 9 months pregnant) we have taken a 2+ week vacation on our sailboat. Since we missed it last year, and our poor boat has been so neglected for the past 2 years, and I HATE the thought of becoming "those people" who own a sailboat that they never use, we really want to try to do it this year. Normally we go pretty far - across the straight and north in the San Juan Islands and into Canada and the Gulf Islands, we cover a lot of ground. But this time we have agreed to just do very short days and stay local to Puget Sound. No more than 2 - 3 hours of sailing/motoring per day. But still - there will be challenges. A few of the things I am struggling with:

where / how to put Callie to sleep on the boat. She pulls up on everything, she stands up in her crib. If I put her down for a nap on the boat, she will immediately jump up. I have to figure out how to contain her and keep her in some kind of 'bed'. The boat is too small for a porta-crib. At night I think I could just take her to bed with me, but it's nap time that's got me scratching my head.
where to feed them. I'm getting a couple of those booster seats with a small tray. I guess I'll just set them on the benches. It's not necessarily the most stable spot, but there isn't really any other room.
what to feed them - they eat a huge variety of food, so this shouldn't be too big of a problem. I just want to try to give stuff that's will minimize the mess as much as possible (so no spaghetti!), while still keeping their meals interesting.
what to do with them while we are anchoring and docking. Jim can mostly sail the boat by himself if necessary. But anchoring and docking are two activities that require both of us. so I have to be able to put the babies down somewhere safe.

We are determined to keep sailing as a part of our life with kids. I know there are people out there who do this, but I'm just not sure how. what are we getting ourselves in to? any assvice is appreciated.

Second dilemna:

My sister will be having a baby shower in San Diego in October. My options:

don't go
go alone - leave the babies with Jim for the weekend.
take one baby with me
take both babies with me - venture 2 airplane trips by myself with two babies.
convince Jim to come.

I guess the reality is that option 1 will probably be the most likely.

Maybe Option 2 is doable - I'd just hate to leave my husband with his hands so full, and I'd rather not be away from them.

Option 3 would work better for him, but the problem is that I'd have to choose which baby to leave behind, and I'd be riddled with guilt for the one I didn't choose.

Option 4 - Oy. possible. but is it worth it? Me + two babies on an airplane for 3+ hours each way.

Option 5 - Mostly a cost issue. Buying two tickets, getting him to take a day or two off work.

What would you do?

a rare quiet moment

2008-08-31T21:28:00.001-07:00

Occasionally it's the simple things that can inspire the imagination. This day they pulled the blanket off the arm of the couch and sat enthralled with the fringe for a surprisingly long time.

a happy ending

2008-08-28T15:32:00.001-07:00

I was going to add this as an update in the other post, but I decided it deserved its own.

I went and held a beautiful baby boy yesterday - and he brought tears to my eyes.

My friend M. We met on an IVF discussion board. She was embarking on IVF after having first an eptopic that ended in a ruptured tube and her nearly bleeding to death. And then an early miscarriage. And then several months on clomid but couldn't seem to get pg again. So she started IVF. Cycle #1 she ovulated the night before retrieval (they tell you this never happens - but it does). Cycle #2 was cancelled because she wouldn't supress. #3 Cancelled due to a cyst. #4 finally made it to transfer and BFN. #5 also made it to transfer, then hospitalized due to internal bleeding - the doc botched something. BFN. She was diagnosed with Ashermans syndrome (scar tissue in the uterus). They had some embryos in the freezer. They moved on to surrogacy. Two failed FETs to the surrogate - call those cycles #6 and #7. The she had surgery to try to fix her uterus.

And finally - an FET (into her) with her last frozen embryo - ART cycle #8. Really her intent here was just to 'use up' the embryo. They were moving on to adoption - they had their paperwork done, their 'dear birth mother' letter written. But she couldn't bear to leave an embryo sitting in a freezer.

and...

Baby G was born on August 10th. He is beautiful in every possible way. He is a miracle -given to people who went through hell and back to find him. He brought tears to my eyes - to hold such a precious gift and know in such painful detail everything his mother went through to have him - so many years, so much failure and so much pain. Even after everything she went through - she told me that she would willingly go through every bit of it again, knowing that he would be the end result.

I know exactly how she feels.

The prize is so worth it.

birthday ideas and other ramblings and rantings

2008-08-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that we have a one year birthday coming up in just a little over 3 weeks? It's crazy. I feel like I've been in a time machine.

So - give me your best baby birthday ideas! I'm not big on birthday party throwing. My inclination is to just invite a few family over and let everybody watch the babies go to town on some cake. But I'm open for more creative suggestions if you have them.

____________________

Did I mention before that I've become very selective with the information I share with my mother?

She knows nothing about Daniel's PT eval, and nothing about his CS appointments (even though this one was actually her idea - she thinks I ignored her suggestion). I've just told her that he seems to be doing so much better that we think he's over his hump, just took him a while to mature.

And she definitely knows nothing about Callie's little fall the other day.

My reasons are thus:
1) She worries like crazy. She loses sleep. She gets choked up on the phone. The crazy part of all that is that she will tell anybody who listens that she is a very mellow person and that she "does not let stress into her life". But in reality she is one of the most stressed people I know - she worries and frets about everything.

2) she drives me nuts with all the questioning. She wants minute by minute updates whenever she knows something is going down. She will call 10 times a day for updates. If she knows there is a doctor appointment at a certain time, she will be calling before the hour is even up. And if she doesn't hear from us, she gets very worried. And she keeps calling. and calling. I stopped telling her when my appointments were when I was pregnant because she would not leave me alone about it. Same if she knows the babies have an appointment. And if she knew one of them had a problem - good lord, I'd never get any peace. Of course I'd tell her about something that was going to be major and ongoing, but this stuff that I think we can just handle ourselves, I'm choosing not to share.

So I could say that I don't tell her everything because I have her best interest in mind - I don't want her to worry and get stressed out. But really the honest truth is that I don't want to be subject to the stalking and inquisition.

____________

Update: Callie is doing great. Crawling everywhere like a champ. She maybe has a slight 'limp' to her arm, but most people probably wouldn't even notice. She is back to stealing her brother's toys and climbing all over everything. She has a check up next week.

update

2008-08-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

The ER doc called us last night, she said that the radiologist had taken a closer look at the x-ray and did see something - a "buckling consistent with acute fracture" - but it's very slight - so basically, her arm is a little bit broken. We went to the pediatrician this morning, she said because she doesn't seem to be in pain and she is using the arm, just very tentatively, that they won't do anything about it. She called the orthopedic doc and they agreed - no need for splinting or casting. She wants us to just keep an eye on her and make an appointment with the orthopedic doc next week for them to have a look and maybe take another x-ray. And definitely to call asap if she falls on it again. So bad news that she does have a little break, but good news that at least we now have an answer.

So now my husband is walking around kicking himself because "I broke my daughter's arm" (his words).

our first trip to the emergency room

2008-08-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

I won't be writing about this on my other blog that my family reads. My mother would freak out, she's such a worrier to begin with, I feel like she's always watching how we do everything, and constantly worrying that one of the babies is going to get hurt. I think we're very careful, but I also think we try not to be overly cautious, we believe that they need to explore their world, and the occasional stumble or bump is part of how they learn.

But this is not that kind of situation. This was carelessness. Not by me.

Callie fell off the changing table. It's a high changing table - we're tall people, and we use a dresser that's taller than the average changing table. So it was about a 4 foot fall. Onto a hard wood floor. Jim was changing her. He turned his back to lean out the door to ask me what to dress her in. And thud, she hit the floor.

The first temptation (after realizing that she was conscious and not screaming in pain) would have been for me to start screaming at him about how careless he had been, he knows not to turn his back on her, he knows that she tries to flip over on that changing pad and crawl around. But I could immediately see by the look on his face that any guilt I might have leveled on him would be nothing compared to what he was thinking of himself. So I said nothing, and just went about tending to my daughter.

It was about 2 hours past her nap time, as we had been out running around. So she was already fussy and very groggy. So it's hard to tell whether a child has hit their head in that circumstance. We called the consulting nurse, she put us through a batter of questions, we collectively agreed that she was probably fine, but we were to make sure she woke every 3 hours through the night, not give her any pain meds that might mask symptoms, immediately bring her in if she passed out, started vomiting, etc. But she seemed fine.

Until we sat her down on the floor and she tried to crawl. She either won't or can't put weight on her left arm. So we called again, and were told to take her to the ER.

To make a long story slightly less long - net was they could find nothing wrong with her arm. They did x-rays, and nothing was broken. They examined her very thoroughly and found nothing, and she appears to be in no pain. The arm just collapses under her when she tries to put weight on it to crawl. Maybe it's just bruised, maybe it's just sore enough that she's favoring it. They don't know. They sent us home and told us to call our pediatrician monday morning if she doesn't seem better - maybe a night's rest will help.

Well that was yesterday, and she still can't crawl. So we'll be calling first thing monday. I don't think it's broken or fractured, or torn anything - she would be in pain. It seems more like a nerve thing - like the strength just isn't there.

Jim is nearly beside himself, I've never seen him so low. He feels so guilty.

I'll provide an update when I have one.

Funny - I always thought it would be boys that landed you in the ER, I didn't expect the girl to be the first one there.

----------------

In other news - Danny is doing well. I think the CS and the PT are helping him. He's still not rolling or crawling, but he's trying more to get his knees up under him, and he's reaching better for things. The physical therapist was very impressed with his progress at his appointment last week, we have more home exercises to do and we take him back for another check in 3 weeks.

updates and milestones and where has the time gone.

2008-08-11T16:19:00.001-07:00

Trying to pull myself back into the blogging. I can’t say I’ve been too busy to blog this past week, just haven’t gotten to it.

We're good here.

I'm settling in to the new job well. (I mentioned that I quit my old job, right?) I’m working for my old company as an independent contractor. Not the exact same job, different group and different project, but very similar work. An easy adjustment. Stupid company – they are now paying me a lot more money to work fewer hours – because they didn’t want to let me work as a part time employee, so I’m working as a part time consultant and charging them a lot of money. Stupid. But it’s working out great for me. I mostly work from home, and I just go in for meetings a couple days a week. Working at home is great. I have a nice quiet little office in our basement, and after I work for a few hours I can take a break and go upstairs and see my babies. I love it. Actually right now I am sitting out on my patio reading email and enjoying the nice weather. I don’t know how we survived before wireless networks. And they made a little mistake on the money - she opened the PO for a slightly higher amount than we agreed to. I pointed it out to her, and she said that since it was already open for that amount, then that's what she'll pay me. Nice! So all’s well that ends well on the job front.

Baby update:

We think that Danny may be attempting to use his first sign language (we’ve been trying to teach them basic baby signs). Thursday he was putting his hands to his mouth like maybe he was making the sign for eating. So we quickly gave him a snack and that seemed to make him happy.

Callie is mimicking all kinds of sounds – she’s started trying to mimic Danny’s very high pitched scream (not so pleasant to have two doing that), and she’ll growl and talk in a soft voice back at us. And Friday she was mimicking me coughing. She is very interested in books the last few days. Friday she crawled over to me with a book. I put her in my lap and read it, and she was cracking up laughing. It was so cute. Not sure what she thought was so funny. We have a basket full of their little books, and she will stand at the basket and pull every book out. Callie also now claps when you tell her she's a good girl. She'll crawl up to something she's not supposed to touch, you say no, so she turns around and sits down. Then you say good girl, and she claps. so cute. She crawls and cruises everywhere, and pulls up on everything. She will be walking soon. We joke that she is like having a puppy – she has very smartly figured out that she can carry a toy in her mouth when she crawls. Add that to the growling, and the fact that she will pick up food off the floor under her high chair if you put her down after dinner, and it sometimes seems like we have a cute little puppy. Oh, and she licked my toes the other day.

She has decided to return to swaddling sometimes. There are times when she is just so wound up in her crib that she won’t go to sleep. And if we wrap her arms up, then she seems very content and comforted and she goes right to sleep. Last night she was standing up jumping in her crib, and I went in to calm her down. I laid the swaddling blanket down on the crib. She sat down, crawled over to it, and laid down on it. She wanted me to swaddle her. I’ve never heard of this before.

Two little updates on Daniel that I hadn't mentioned yet.

First, I may have mentioned that he's always had digestive issues - bad gas, constipation, etc. He just seemed to have such a sensitive system. We started doing some research and I found out about a treatment called Cranial Sacral Therapy. Basically the idea is that nerves and things coming out of the back of the head sometimes don't get lined up right, it's more common with c-section babies, and this can sometimes affect the digestion. I don't totally get how. They do some kind of light pressure/massage on the back of the head and neck that's supposed to get things flowing right and help his digestion be more normal. It's kind of alternative medicine, but it's totally non-invasive and lighter touch than even massage. I figure it can't hurt, and maybe it will help. I don't want to keep giving the poor guy medicine for his gas, or always have to fill him up on prune juice just so he can poop. So we're taking him to a doctor this afternoon who does this. I'll let you know how it goes.

The second thing is about his strength and movement and sitting skills. I started getting concerned that maybe he was getting a little behind. He sits up, but still sometimes falls over, and he makes no effort to roll over or crawl. I talked to the pediatrician about it. She said that he really should have totally mastered sitting by this age, but she wasn't too concerned about the other things. But she said that since we have good insurance that pays for it, it wouldn't hurt to get him a little physical therapy evaluation - see what a PT thinks of his progress, maybe get some pointers on some exercises we can do with him at home. So monday he goes for a PT eval.

Of course you know it figures that as soon as you make the appointments, the problem seems to go away. His tummy has been better this week than probably his whole life, and he hasn't fallen over while sitting all week, and he's starting to push up on his hands, and even has tried his knees once or twice. Oh well, we'll keep the appointments and see what they say.

Update – as I wrote this on Friday but didn’t get it posted:

We've had an interesting couple of days with Daniel. His appointment friday was interesting, that doctor thinks she can help him a lot with his digestion issues. She did some massaging on his head for a while, and talked to us a lot about how all these systems in the body are connected, how the bones in the skull all need to be lined up right or nerves can be pinched, which affect a lot of things. The fact that he was a twin (squished in the womb), and breech, and c-section, and he didn't cry right away at birth - all add up. It affects his digestion, his congestion (remember his breathing problems), he arches and screams and bites because he's uncomfortable. So she wants to see him weekly for a while. It's a little out there - but seems harmless and it does make sense at a very high level. He seemed very relaxed afterwards, and that night he nursed better than he has in a long time, didn't bite me at all, and actually fell asleep in my arms nursing. Also he's been pooping a lot more the last few days.

Today was his PT eval. Short story: he has the gross motor skills of a 6 month old, fine motor skills of a 7 - 8 month old. She said he basically got to a point of development and then got stuck. Why he got stuck we're not sure - maybe his weight got ahead of his strength, and he was able to roll over but then quickly gained weight and couldn't move that weight any more. or who knows. It's all about his trunk - his turning and side muscles. He doesn't roll, turn sideways, lean sideways - all things that involve the strength of the muscles at the sides, and affect his balance. When the balance is affected, it limits them being able to try more movement, or do more with their hands - so he's stuck. So we have some at home things to do to help show him how to use those muscles, and we'll go back in a few weeks for another check. I'm glad we went.

Oh – and my babies will be one year old 6 weeks from yesterday. I can’t even fathom where the time has gone.

I haven't dropped dead

2008-08-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still here. Sorry I've been away. Travelling, getting sick between trips, and now starting a new job. All is well. Posts forthcoming. Thanks for checking in.

just a few quick updates. no time.

2008-07-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been away for a seriously long time. Lots going on, very little spare time for blogging. I hope everyone is well.

Brief updates:

I quit my full time job. I'm going to attemp going it alone - doing consulting / project work on a vendor basis. Ideally for the same company. There are lots of moms who are former employees who are doing this kind of work here. I should be able to at least make my same salary, working less hours and more flexibility. Sounds like a win-win for me - only catch is that I need to find a project to work on. But I've got some leads. In the mean time I'm very busy wrapping things up at work, and getting my self set up as a business so that I can be an independant contractor. I'll try to write a longer post soon to tell you more detail about how all this went down. In short: stupid company. their loss.
We have officially hired the 'temp' nanny as our new full time nanny. She is working out great. We have her for 40 hours for now, but have told her that my work schedule should get lighter soon, so she will end up with at least one day a week that's a short day.
The babies are doing great. Callie is crawling and pulling herself up. Danny has finally decided to join the world of self feeding. Not very efficient at getting much food in the mouth, but they're both trying. This weekend we installed baby gates and lowered Callie's crib.

I have a few more questions from readers that I haven't answered yet. I'll try to do another Q&A post soon. In the mean time, feel free to keep asking me anything you want to know.

I'm trying to figure out how to share some of my documents with some of you who have asked. Let's see if this works...

This first one is the log sheet we use with the nanny. I created this using a few different examples I found. It's working pretty good. Let me know what you think.

Here is my uber list of baby gear. I've been keeping this updated and sharing with a few preggo friends, so I thought some of you might like it too.

and finally - this is our schedule and food. This one has three tabs - their 5 month schedule, their schedule at 8 months, and our food menu at 8 months. We're eating lots more finger food and less pureed things now, but I haven't yet created a 9.5 months version.

not a good day

2008-06-17T15:13:00.000-07:00

So they declined my request to move to part time. I wasn't really expecting this. This company I work for, they talk a lot about how flexible they are. They have this whole Flexible Work Arrangements program - FWA. It has it's own website. The HR people will tell you that they are very supportive of FWA - but of course the final decision is up to your organizations management. So really it's all smoke and mirrors. They aren't supportive of it. They just put on a good show. It's too bad. It's disappointing. Especially from a company that is supposedly one of the great places to work, if you believe the magazines. Hypocrites.

Now what?

My options:
1. Continue working full time. But I don't think I can. I feel like I'm barely keeping up now, and that I'm doing a crap ass job at both my professional job and my mothering job. I'm spread too thin and it's not sustainable.

2. Look for a different job in a different group that maybe would let me go part time. Problem is that what I do is advertising. And I already work for the advertising group. So if I went to a different group it would mean doing something different. I could do that. I'm smart, I'm adaptable. And my job really is mostly project management, a skill I could apply to any number of marketing disciplines. But do I want to? I don't know.

My motivation to keep busting my ass for this company is running thin.

3. Quit and be a full time SAHM. Not really an option. We theoretically could maybe do it if we cut waaay back on our expenses and saved nothing - including putting a hold on any kind of retirement savings, Jim's 401k, etc. But that doesn't seem very smart. And we don't live all that extravagantly to begin with. It's doable, but our lives wouldn't be any fun. And me full time with babies might not be in anybody's best interest.

4. Quit as a full time employee, and do contract work part time. There are always lots of contract positions available, people are always looking for experienced help - for short term projects, for maternity leave coverage, etc. The guy who covered for me during my maternity leave does this very thing - he used to be a full time employee of our company, and he quit and started contracting a few years ago. I'm just as good as him, and he never has trouble finding contracts.

Option 2 and Option 4 are on the consideration list. At the moment I strongly lean toward option 4. But I only got this news today and I really should let it sink in and fully explore option 2 before I make any kind of decision.

What I'd really like to do is walk into someones office today and tell these bastards to take this job and shove it. But unfortunately my desire for a paycheck precludes me from doing that.

answers to your questions so far.

2008-06-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a few questions so far. So here are some answers. Keep the questions coming.

What is the babies' feeding schedule (what do they eat, when, how much)on a typical day? Lately, it seems like they eat constantly. They are nursing 5 times day and eating solids up to 5 times a day. I actually have their entire schedule and their food menus detailed out in an excel workbook (because I needed to do it for the nanny, or I'm just obsessive like that. you decide), and as soon as somebody tells me how to share that kind of format here, I will post for you all the dirty details. But here's the short version:

7am (or as late as 7:30) - wake up and nurse
8am breakfast (yogurt)
9am - nurse (or bottle, 5 oz EBM). then nap.
10:30 or 11-ish - snack (a little fruit or veggie, or finger food)
12:00 - lunch - oatmeal, fruit, veggies
1:00 - nurse or bottle. then nap.
3 or 3:30 ish - snack
5:00 - nurse or bottle. then nap.
7:00 - dinner (cereal, veggies, fruit, some finger food)
8:00 - nurse and bed time

How do you put the babies down to sleep for naps and nighttime--are they awake or asleep? Almost always awake. Occasionally Callie falls asleep nursing at bed time, but it's rare. We put them in sleep sacks, give them a little blankie or stuffed animal, give them a paci (Daniel takes it, Callie tosses it), dim the light, turn on the fan, and walk away. 90% of the time this works great. With Daniel actually it works great 99% of the time. Callie gets so wired that she sometimes has a hard time calming down and then we go back in and pat her and try to give her the paci to calm her down. Maybe once a week or a little less we need to pick her up, but we really try to avoid it. I don't really believe in letting babies totally cry it out, so I'll only let her cry for 5 or 10 minutes. It usually only takes one round of comforting for her to mellow out.

Do you have any problems with them sharing a room--i.e. one baby crying out at night and waking the other? Very rarely at night. Sometimes for naps one will cry or talk loudly and wake the other. But we usually try to go in and get the awake one before he/she wakes the other one up. At night they both sleep so soundly that they generally don't wake each other up.

Do you ever think how much easier it would be to just have one baby (and then feel totally guilt-ridden for thinking it)? I really don't. Occasionally I think that having one baby must be a piece of cake, but then I also think it must be kind of boring and lonely. I don't know anything different than having twins. I have never once wished I didn't have twins. Honestly. never.

What's the worst day you had since your babies arrived? Hmm. Hard to pinpoint a single day. I guess the hardest day emotionally was the day that we had to check Daniel back into the hospital. It was so scary. On the scale of health problems that I know babies can have, this all turned out to be nothing, but it was scary, until we got some answers. Otherwise - I had a few days when I was home on maternity leave that were just exhausting - full days of screaming and spitting up. Days when I was near tears at the end of the day, out of sheer exhaustion. The shit and barf storm of 2008 that we endured last week was no picnic. Sick babies are yucky. Really the barf filled car seat that I posted a picture of earlier was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever had to deal with. Funny though - it didn't gross me out nearly as much as the pile of cat barf I had to clean up off the floor the next day. Perspective, I guess.

Do you ever feel jealous of your husband that he has a stronger genetic connection to your kids? No, this thought has honestly never occurred to me.

Do you feel that this has changed your relationship with your sister? Yes. I feel much closer to her now. Because she is so much younger than me, we never had a very close relationship. I think this brought us closer, and it helped me to look at her as so much more than just my 'baby' sister. I always thought of her as just a little girl. She is a strong and generous woman whom I admire and respect. She did something totally selfless.

How does your sister feel about your children? I've never specifically asked in these terms. I don't think that she looks at them as more than her niece and nephew - perhaps she is more interested in them than her other nieces and nephews, but that also could be because she is closer to me than she is to my other sisters. I do wonder how having her own baby (she is 15 weeks pregnant now) will change how she looks at these. Will she feel something different about them once she feels that bond with her baby? Or will she have a different understanding of what she gave to me once she sees how she feels about her baby. I don't know.

That's it? Keep the questions coming. I like them, it gives me things to think about.

another baby update - but there's so much to tell

2008-06-16T16:09:00.001-07:00

People ask me what is my favorite thing about having twins. And I will always tell them that it is watching two unique individuals develop side by side. I used to be a big believer in nurture over nature - I thought that more of who you are came from how you were raised. Now I no longer think that. Now I know that you are a unique, special and opinionated individual from the moment you are conceived. These two babies are so unique and different. And it is so fun to see how they are just expressive and opinionated little people at such a young age. I had no idea, it is such a wonderful surprise.

So here we are, at 8 months, 3 weeks and 5 days on the outside...

Callie E:
Favorite sleeping position: On her tummy. This is new in the past week. She now flips over almost instantly when you lay her down.
Favorite foods: Cookies, crackers, breads, cheerios, yogurt, sweet vegetables, watermelon. hmm, seems to be a trend of sweet things. Note to self: more vegetables. Anything someone else is eating.
Least favorite foods: Pureed green beans. No sir. Not interested. Can't blame her, I tasted it and it was pretty gross. We won't be pureeing green beans any more - they like the whole ones better.
New foods we've tried recently: cheese! that's pretty good. Pasta. Blueberries.
Favorite beverages: water, mommy's milk. She's recently discovered carrot juice and she likes that a lot. She drinks from a sippy cup really well.
Favorite new tricks: Getting up on her hands and knees.
Favorite toys: a red clapper thing - like a rattle sort of; a light up musical star; she has this musical fishbowl with blocks that drop in and make the bowl make sounds; any toy that her brother is holding; and anything that's not actually a toy - jewelry, watches, beads, keys, phones, remotes
Favorite color: Red.
Favorite game: being tickled.
Favorite person: her daddy.
Favorite precious metals: Gold, silver, pewter. As long as it's shiny, she's not picky.
Favorite precious stones: diamonds, pearls. the more expensive the better. I fear she may grow up to be a jewelry thief - what with her like for bling and her habit of stealing.
Favorite sounds: She likes to growl.
Favorite thing to do: have her clothes off and roll around on the floor
Favorite creature to stare at: the cat
Favorite hand: left, we think.
Other things she likes to do for fun: spit, catch bubbles, look at the sky and watch airplanes, touch faces (especially her brother's while he's trying to nurse).
What she is working on now: Crawling: so far just managing to push herself backwards. Finger foods: learning how to pick up small things and manage to get them in the mouth. Strategizing how to get a hold of the cat. Thinking about knocking off a jewelry store sometime soon.
Mom's favorite thing about her: Holding her when she's sleeping - these are the moments when I am reminded what a precious gift from heaven she is, I truly feel like I am holding an angel sent to earth to change my life. And I love the way she touches my face, she looks at me and studies my features, and gently touches my nose and mouth and cheeks and ears. Her dainty little fingers feel so wonderful on my face.

Daniel J:
Favorite sleeping position: On his back. Arms out to the side or over his head, blankie or stuff animal over his face. He's the easiest baby ever to put to bed. He will lay there and talk and pound for a long time, but hardly ever cries.
Favorite foods: Pizza crust, breads, watermelon. He likes to eat all his baby food - cereal, pureed fruits and veggies. He'll yell at you if you go to slow with the bites.
Least favorite foods: anything that requires too much effort on his part. He's mostly happen to open his mouth and let you shove stuff in.
New foods we've tried recently: toast
Favorite beverages: mommy's milk. Prune juice.
Favorite new tricks: 'swimming' in the floor - he lays on his belly and flaps his arms and legs. Pinching. Clapping his feet (and hands sometimes too), waving, sitting up - he has perfect straight posture, makes the rest of us look like total slouches.
Favorite toys: blue elephant, blue shaking toy that's full of bells, colored teething rings, big stuffed inchworm, feet
Favorite color: Blue
Favorite game: peekaboo
Favorite person: momma!
Favorite sounds: yelling
Favorite thing to do: jumping! Crib pounding, taking baths, lounge around
Favorite creature to stare at: Callie.
Favorite hand: right. Except he always uses his left hand to 'hold himself', if you know what I mean ;-)
Other things he likes to do for fun: spit, catch bubbles, watch cars go by
What he is working on now: rolling over (when he feels like trying). Tolerating strangers.
Mom's favorite thing about him: His smile. He melts my heart when he looks in my eyes and smiles. He has such an expressive and sweet little face. And his laugh, it's the best sound I've ever heard in my whole life. I love knowing how much he loves me.

Next up: Swimming Lessons!

blogging help needed.

2008-06-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

Does anyone know how to post an excel file to the blog? Or at least how to create an image of the worksheet, so that I could then post it as a picture?

just a taste of our fun weekend

2008-06-14T15:16:00.001-07:00

You should be glad that I didn't take a photo of the poop blowout that he had after this.

Ask me your questions?

2008-06-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

A bunch of my fellow bloggers are doing this - I guess it's national comment leaving month. I missed the deadline to 'officially' join ('cause I'm terribly behind in reading other blogs), but I'll unofficially participate anyway...

So - Ask me any question you want in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer them.

also...

2008-06-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

forgot:

six: being away. I had my first trip away from the babies last week. A business trip. I left tuesday night, returned friday mid-day. I shed some tears on the way out the door tuesday night, leaving was hard. Really hard. But once I was gone, I was fine. I was busy with work, so didn't have too much time to feel separation anxiety. I looked at pics of them often, and Jim did a great job of posting new pics for me to see. And it turned out to be a great opportunity for him to have some time with the babies. I had offered to schedule friends to come over and help him, but he didn't want me to. He wanted to do it by himself. I had the nanny help as much as possible - had her make up all the bottles and prep their dinner, so he didn't have to figure out those details. And it all went fine. He wanted to prove that he could handle it, and I guess he also wanted to prove to me that they would be just fine for a few days without me.

Also thursday was our 9 year wedding anniversary and he sent me a lovely bouquet of flowers to my hotel room. such a sweet man.

But pumping while traveling is a major PITA. I hope to not have to do that again - trying to avoid travel.

I was worried that they would like their bottles better, that they wouldn't want nurse when I got back. But we got right back in the swing of things no problem.

general musings about me

2008-06-09T14:18:00.001-07:00

A few misc topics to get off my head:

One. I'm tired of pumping. It feels better just to admit it to myself. I have no intention of stopping. My goal was that they would never have formula, and I intend to stick to that. I will continue pumping so that they can have bottles until they are 1 year old and then can have other milk. My pumping output has diminished, I am lately pumping only about half of what they need, but I have a large freezer stash to work from, so we should be just fine to get to the 1 year mark with EBM in bottles. Frankly I probably have enough that I don't really need to be pumping it during the day - but I need to pump in order to maintain my supply for the days when I am at home and I nurse them. Funny thing is that even though I am pumping less lately, I don't think my supply has diminished as they seem perfectly satisfied with the amount they get when I nurse them all day. I think I'm just not pumping as well lately. I love nursing them, and I plan to continue morning and evening nursing beyond one year. I never really thought I'd be one of these people breastfeeding babies past one year, but it's such a wonderful time with them, that I see no reason to quit as soon as they turn one year old. But man, I'll be happy to pack away that pump.

Two. pregnancy jealousy. again. One of the ladies on my IVF board (we've all been posting on this board for 3 years now!) has just announced that she got a positive HPT with #2 - naturally. Her and I had a very similar history. She finally got PG on her 6th cycle, her last chance before going to donor eggs. Her baby is 6 months old. But this is totally MY fantasy - that I could just get PG naturally. so. twinge. jealousy. even though I'm very happy for her.

Of course, in order for me to even have any hope of getting pg naturally, it would probably require having sex with my husband. I'm not opposed to the idea in theory - but who has the energy. I fall into bed at night completely exhausted, and want to do nothing other than close my eyes. Poor neglected husband. Maybe my new work schedule will help some of that problem.

So that brings me to update item number Three. I am very close to getting a part time schedule at work. My boss is on board, HR is on board. I just need to get my boss's new boss on board, and fill out the official paperwork. We are targeting July as a start date for my reduced schedule - hopefully we can get it done by then. I would come to the office three days a week - probably monday, tuesday, thursday. And then just check my email for 3 hours from home on one of the other days, or maybe 1.5 hours each day - for a total of a 30 hour work week. It means taking a 25% pay cut. But I think it's worth it, for the better balance, the lower stress level. Lately I have felt like I am serving two masters and doing neither very well. We'll have to tighten the belt a bit, but we can do it.

Four. The new nanny is working out great. We really like her. In so many ways she is so much better than the last one - and we thought the last one was great. Live and learn. The babies love her. Only catch is that she needs full time income - so if we want to keep her then we need to pay her the equivalent of a 40-hour paycheck. But the good news is that her hourly rate is less than the other nanny, so we will be paying less (although not enough less to make up for my pay cut, but oh well). We'll probably have her come 4 days still - and one of the days that I'm not working I can use to get all my chores and errands done - which should make our weekends much lower stress, and allow me to spend more time focused on the babies, rather than multi-tasking and trying to keep them occupied while I get chores done, or have to drag them with me to costco & such.

Five. my weight. It's a strange thing. The general average on the scale hasn't changed in over a month. But I still feel like I'm getting smaller. The size 6 jeans I bought two weeks ago today feel a bit baggy. I guess the shape of my body is still changing, even though the scale stays the same. Revealing all the facts: before I got pregnant, I was at my all time high. 187 pounds. You probably wouldn't have guessed I weighed that much, because I'm 5'10" and so I never looked THAT heavy, but still. I wore a size 14 (not always comfortably). Now I weigh something between 150 - 154 pounds. And as mentioned, I just bought size 6 pants. This is due to zero effort on my part - I eat like a horse and I don't exercise. It's all from breastfeeding the twins. I have to get myself in a better routine before I wean them, otherwise the weight will probably creep right back on. It's funny though to look in the mirror. I know my arms and face and legs look thinner. But my middle is still so mushy that it's hard to think I look that much better. I really need to do some situps. I'll get to that in my spare time. Somebody asked to see a pic - perhaps I'll dig and see if I can find a good before/after comparison for you.

ok, enough for today. back to work.

is this week over yet?

2008-05-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

The fact that I'm even taking the time out to write this is insane. I have no time. But I feel the need to stop and catch my breath for a minute.

We're getting by this week with a temp nanny whom I actually like a lot. We will definitely consider hiring her permanently, once I figure out what I'm doing with my job.

I talked to my boss - she is on board with me switching to a part time role. But there's lots of legwork involved - I need to figure out what my options are, meet with HR, etc. It will take some time. So we have this temp nanny full time for a few weeks, and then we'll decide what we're hiring for once I know what my work schedule will look like.

This all has terrible timing - as this is my busiest week at work in like 3 years. I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water - trying to juggle this busy week, when it's already a short week, and I'm trying to spend a few hours each day at home with the temp nanny. Because I'm not the type to just have a new nanny show up and I walk out the door. Tomorrow will be another crazy day at work, but then hopefully things will get back to a normal pace - we're just in last minute crunch mode for a big project, but once we get past a few deadlines, things should be much calmer.

Next week I have to go on a short business trip. It will be my first time away from the babies. I'm not looking forward to it at all. There's whole post in that, which I'll take some time to put to words maybe while I'm travelling.

In other news: my babies are totally anti-social! We had a friend come over this morning with triplets who are basically the same age as my two. (born a week before, but at 34 weeks, so older by birth date, younger by gestational age, you get it). And my two normally sweet and happy babies - they cried basically the whole time. Daniel was downright mad. He yelled at me! And as soon as the triplets left - my babies were as happy as could be. WTF?? Do they really need to be socialized at 8 months old? I had no idea that they could be that way. Really, I was shocked. So now, on top of all the other shit I need to get done - I gotta figure out a way to get these babies a little more social interaction with other babies. I don't want to raise a couple of antisocial little hermits.

it is done

2008-05-23T17:31:00.001-07:00

we have no nanny.

I gave it a lot of thought - talked to my husband, talked to my mom, talked to a friend whom I trust very much, talked to the nanny agent some more (who is a mother of twins and has totally BTDT).

Everybody had the same advice: you have to go with your gut.

And my gut said it was time to move on. It didn't matter how apologetic she was - she went off the deep end and acted unprofessionally, and I couldn't feel comfortable with someone who conducted themself that way. We hired a "professional" nanny for a lot of reasons - one of those being that we expected her to act professionally, and she didn't. I might have been more forgiving had I hired an inexperienced college student, but this was supposed to be a professional.

So I called the agent this morning, and told that I was willing to meet and have an open mind, but that my gut was telling me that it was time to move on. She said she thought I might say that, and she felt I was totally justified, and we should just cancel the meeting and not waste our time. So she called and fired the nanny for me. (this agenct is worth every last penny we paid her - if only for the luxury of not having to have that conversation myself - I know, I'm a whimp). And she has already lined up a few potential new candidates for me, even one who is willing and able to temp next week.

Now we must decide - are we looking for another full time nanny, or a part time one? I need to have a conversation with my boss next week, and see if she thinks part time is an option for me in this job. I've scheduled a meeting with her on tuesday. Mean time - I'm going to plan to work half days next week, see about this temp nanny for those half days, and buy us some time to figure this out.

Thanks to all of you who offered your support and advice. It helped.

Now I'm tired. Emotionally drained from all this. I have resumes in my inbox (yes, the agent is fast) to look at, but it needs to wait until tomorrow, I don't have the energy today.