2nd TRIMESTER!!! Woweeee! 14w1d

October 1st marked the first official day of my second trimester according to babycenter.com!!!  I am so excited to reach this point.  I have been feeling great.  I couldn’t have asked for a healthier, more feel good pregnancy thus far.  So, I decided to celebrate and post my first bump pic.  This was taken at 5:30am, before breakfast.  I get so bloated by the end of the day, so I wanted my bump pic to be tried and true – not the late evening bloat belly.

I feel that I have really settled into my pregnancy and don’t find myself anxiously anticipating my next change day as much as I used to.  It’s a real joy carrying our little “half pint” as my husband so affectionately refers to them as.

I look forward to writing more.  It has been a busy fall thus far.  Tomorrow we are headed to the mountains for our annual FALL get together with our dear friends.  It’s always a wonderful time for some R&R and a WHOLE lot of the great outdoors.  Last year they were pregnant during our trip.  How I remember dreaming that we would be on similar journey of our own this year and HERE WE ARE!  Such a blessing.

Infertility – A Husband’s Perspective – Take 2

From time to time, my husband feels inspired to write a post…to details his feelings as we journey this season together.  I encourage it and LOVE it.  This was written by him over the weekend.

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Today was a very discouraging day in our battle with infertility.  Once again we had to succumb to the undertow of Danielle’s period.  Cycle 20…..the big 20.  There was a brief period of hope recently when we thought that one of my medications might be causing our infertiliy.  Now after two months of trying off the medication, that hope is hanging by a thread.  Yes, we may analize and say that next month will be the true test because it does take a certain amount of time for the sperm to regenerate (somewhere around 65 days),  But now we are wondering if this really was the open door we hoped for, or nothing at all.

Monday I head back to the pharmacy for my wife to pick up another bottle of clomid from my coworkers.  How humiliating.  This is one of the many areas of pride that I’ve had to let down and get over in this process.  Being a pharmacist and having to pick up prescriptions from the same people that I work with is one of my favorite joys. (sarcasm)

I’m not sure what is more discouraging for my wife; not being pregnant again, or thinking about all of the incredible hoops we have to jump through in the next few weeks to further our attempts.  We have ultrasounds, injections, pills, and and IUI appointment to arrange, all while both having a full work schedule and employers who are chronically understaffed and coworkers who have no idea what we are going through that could be so important that we would leave them stranded.

A friend of ours recently asked us after hearing about our continued struggle, “do you think your timing might be off?”  What an insulting question!  The ignorance of many of our friends is staggering and infuriating sometimes.  We are two educated people in the medical field who have been trying desperately to get pregnant now for a year and a half.  Our timing?!?  Do you know what you are talking about?  Do you even know your own cycle enough to be asking that question?   I’m sorry but I figured since this is a blog I can let out the true steam of my inner thoughts.

When my best friend got his wife pregnant by accident, I had such a hard time dealing with the feelings of injustice.  I know that there is a greater plan, but come on!?!  They weren’t even sure if they wanted to have kids.  I have been avoiding getting together with him one on one because I am fairly sure that now that he has successfully gotten his wife pregnant, he is an expert on the topic and fit to help me narrow down the problem we are having.  Dude, you forgot your condom one time, you have no idea what we are going through!

All in all, I’m feeling pretty worn out from all of this.  I’m feeling like the kid who gets beat up every week and has his lunch money taken, but still has to put his glasses back on and make it to class.  Somehow I have to search deep down and find some hope to keep going in this.  Sometimes I feel like it would be so easy just to give up, but when I think about the emptiness my wife and I would feel at that time, I find enough strength to keep going.  I’m hoping that day doesn’t have to come, but I know it may.  I’m hoping that if it does that, at the same time, God will bring a complete peace to our hearts.

March Photo Challenge: Day 19 – Numbers

18.

18, can you see it?

18 glorious days until my husband’s beloved swimmers are FREE of their chemically altered structure. (SEE our post about our appointment with our Reproductive Endocrinologist.)

Friday, April 6 is our day!  Spermatogenesis will be complete and hopefully we will be on our way to a pregnancy.  Am I that hopeful?  Not really at this point.  Hope was alive for a good 6 weeks, but is beginning to fade. I take in almost completed pregnancies and toddling toddlers all around me and I find it hard to believe that I will ever get to live through a stage such as that.  It’s protective.  It’s my ability to cope.  To somehow persevere…to maintain, at times, at least in this area, a glass half-empty mentality.  I will give it the phrase – guarding my heart.  There has already been so much hurt, bleeding pain, and ceaseless tears.  So, I wait.  I live.  One day at a time.  A philosophy that works, that protects, that offers hope in the stagnant waiting in which we walk.

March Photo Challenge – Day 3

DOMESTIC.

Ok, because I don’t get to brag about progress in a pregnancy or little feet pitter-pattering about our home, I am going to take this opportunity to brag on my husband.  He deserves it.  He is one incredible, absolutely irresistible, domestic man.

My husband is EXTREMELY domestic for a man.  He does all the grocery shopping because he WANTS to, because I don’t enjoy it, and because he loves getting a good deal.  He loves to garden and doesn’t mind doing the dishes.  Earlier this week I even caught him organizing the spices in alphabetical order so we could find them better.  He even doesn’t mind cleaning a toilet or making the bed. He also loves to cook.  Last night he was whipping up some cabbage rolls so I decided to snap these pictures.

My boys!  Oh, how I love each of them!

Thanks for checking out Day 3.  We’ll see you again tomorrow.  Man, my creative juices are flowing…not to say anything amazing will come of it…but it’s a start!

March Photo Challenge

Alright, I give in.  Belle over at Scrambled Eggs put together this photo challenge.  I am very intimidated by the whole idea of participating.  I am not very creative, but this will push me and I am really loving what others have already published.  So here goes:

So I have 2 dates to catch up on:

Day 1 = [portrait]  Well, of course I am going to put my wedding pictures up…LOVE them!  I had to put up a few…I never get to bust these out anymore.  Hope y’all don’t mind. Honestly, I really dislike how I did my hair and where I placed my veil…but so it goes…I have learned to love them despite these regrets.   : )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 2 [feet]

This pictures is from our honeymoon in Kauai.  We had just hiked through Weimea Canyon in our Chacos.  We were just a tad bit dirty.  I’m now seeing that my ankles had become cankles.  GROSS.

Now, I must begin contemplating Day 3.

eHarmony – it works

eHarmony.  I’m sure you have heard about it.  Commercials, books, web ads – it’s everywhere.  Let me tell you, I had many less than desirable dates with men met on the “E”, but overall it is one amazing idea.  Soulmates finding lasting love based on 29 dimensions of personality.

I met my husband on eHarmony.  It was love at first sight.  I had dated quite a bit before finding him. In fact, I had had 10 blind dates that fall alone, which is another story entirely for a different time. When my husband to be and I matched up on eharmony, we didn’t bother with long drawn out emails and conversations over the phone.  I had learned that this early communication can be deceptive when it boils down to compatibility and attraction.  The real question is “Do you have chemistry?”  We are both “fish or cut bait” types. The only way to find out if you really want to “fish” is to meet, so it was no surprise that we got straight to the point.

We had planned to meet at a trendy downtown restaurant and have dessert.  Dessert is a perfect first date.  Typically it’s a predictable time frame, not as formal as dinner, and not as casual as coffee.  I was sitting up in the balcony with my eyes on the door, waiting for this unknown man to appear.  The mood was warm, the lighting dim, and the music louder than I had hoped.  He walked in, looked up, our eyes met…can I say I was smitten right then and there?  The conversation flowed effortlessly through the evening.  The spark was present and palpable.  After a wondrous dessert of who knows what, we decided to allow the date to keep unfolding.  We walked a few blocks through the dark, crisp night down to a famously large and wonderful independent bookstore.  After meandering for about an hour through its many rooms of books, we decided we needed to buy a memento.  We settled on magnets.  This would be a night to remember.

Later, after he walked me to my car, we stood talking in hushed tones chilled by the night air.  It was a magical moment as we stared into each others eyes, the city lights illuminating our gleeful dispositions.  Before parting, we hugged one another.  As we did, he lifted me off the sidewalk and twirled me…it was then that I knew that he knew.  I left the following message in my phone as I laid awake deep into the night…heart beating fast, soul full of emotion.  My world stood still:   “I am going to marry him.”  And that was that.