TexasMama

All is still well.

Everything is going well on the PG front.  11w2d today and as of monday the h/r was 158.

And all is made better by the announcement that Tom Delay will resign.  What better news could there possibly be?  OK, news that he was being thrown in jail for, I don't know, EVER, would be better, but I'll take what I can get.

All is well, so far.

Second beta came back at 317, yay!  That's a nice comfortable doubling time of about 39 hours.  I have an u/s scheduled for 3/6 when I will be exactly 7 weeks.  Otherwise things are good.  I have had a few waves of mild nausea and lightheadedness.  I'm still running, but much more slowly. 

I'm starting to do some research to locate a midwife.  The office I am seeing now does only hospital births but most of the homebirth midwives do not do blood work and early u/s so I am sticking with them through the u/s.  After that, I'll move to whoever will be my final midwife.  The woman I had planned to see before is trying to retire.  She still takes some patients but chances are high the actual birth would be attended by her assistant who looks all of 20.  I'm sure she's perfectly competent but S- is adamantly opposed to that arrangement so we will keep looking.

I have the name of another midwife who has been highly recommended by several members of my local API group.  I will set up an appointment with her after the u/s.   Hopefully I will like her because as far as I can tell there are not many other options.

I will also order a doppler after the u/s.  I know there are mixed opinions on the things, but I NEED it. ;-)  I only use it for a few seconds every other day, though, so I really don't think any harm can be done.  This time, I'm getting the one that displays the h/r as I think I might have avoided induction if I'd had it last time.  My dr wanted to know if there was any deceleration during contractions after my water broke last time, but we really couldn't tell, so he had me go it.  Once I was there with confirmed ruptured membranes there was really no going back.

Anyhoo, for now things are good.

So Much for Zen.

Well, last week, with days of insanely faint HPT's in my hand, just like last time, I lost it.  I was sure this pregnancy was going no where.  It really was a strange HPT taking experience.  I got a tiny smudge of a line on 2 different tests at 8dpo and a very faint but clear line on an EPT at 9dpo.  At 10dpo it was slightly darker.  But the  evil FRE was still flat out negative.  I am quite adept a seeing lines where they are not, and there were NONE.

11dpo, the EPT was the same as the previous day.  FRE finally showed a barely visible line.  12dpo the FRE looked exactly the same as the day before.  Not even the tiniest smidge darker.  Even S- was concerned.  I promptly melted down, sure it was over.

But being the crazy that I am, I could not stand to not pee on something, so later that day I broke out the OPK's.  I'd tried them a couple of days earlier and got a clear but faint line.  But this time, the OPK test line was dark!  So I took my little behind strait out to the drugstore and bought a new 3 pack of FRE's.  I peed on one as soon as I got home, and lo and behold there was a clear line.  Still pretty light, but much darker than the one from that same morning.

In the meantime, I had learned on Friday that the insurance company had again denied our application.  After I sent a letter explaining that I had not, in fact, received any infertility treatments in the last 3 years (their initial justification for denying us) they came back with a laundry list of other reasons we are un-insurable.  Fine, no infertility treatments, but we still take issue with your PCOS and its treatment with Glucophage.  And even if we could get past that, we would have a problem with your history of ADD, acid reflux, miscarriage, and abnormal paps.  This response led our insurance agent to say our only hope was group. 

A bit of a nightmare, but there is a very big silver lining.  With group, they cannot deny me because I am pregnant.  Now that I am, that's huge!  Also, I have maternity coverage under my current plan and it is through the same company that so rudely denied my application.  So I decided to rack up as many charges as possible in the meantime and off I went for a beta.

At 14dpo, the beta came back at 134.  That sounded great until I looked at my previous numbers.  In both pregnancies I was tested at 13dpo, so I used the doubling time to come up with a 14dpo number.  For DS it was 265, for the m/c 75.  134 is a lot closer to 75 than 265 but I am staying optimistic until I get the next one back, hopefully tomorrow.  To console myself for a lack of results today, I peed on another FRE and the test line is as dark as the control line, maybe even darker.  That has to be a good sign, right?

So there it is in a very long nut shell.  I am hoping, hoping, hoping. 

Number 2, Take 2

It seems my status as a fertile myrtle has been confirmed.  I am getting very faint VFP's on EPT tests.  FRED still shows a flat out negative, though, which I do not find reassuring.  Hopefully tomorrow the EPT will be darker and the FRED will at least have a second line of some sort.  I'm only 9dpo right now, but I got a + at 9 dpo last time too, and it didn't get much darker.

I have to be zen this time, though, because I cannot go in for bloodwork.  I have an application for Health Insurance under review and it would exclude me if I am pregnant.  If the application gets approved and we get a retroactive Feb 1 start date, I will be fine as long as I don't "know" I am pregnant until well after the insurance is in place.  So for now, I will need to rely on steadily darkening HPT's for reassurance. 

Summary of the neatness of all the dates involved in this could-be pregnancy: 

First Cycle trying

CD1 - Jan 15, Day of the Marathon I ran in honor of my might-have-been baby.

CD16 - O day - January 30, Due date for that pregnancy.

EDD - October 23, 1 day before my 8th wedding anniversary.  My Mother, Father and younger niece are all October birthdays.  (G- and My sister are May and S- and I are February so everybody has to share with somebody. ;-)

So all that all has to mean some good Karma, right?

Due Date Blues

m Today is the due date from my miscarriage.  *sigh*  I've done a lot of things since then that I would not have been able to do if I were pregnant and I'm doing more things in the next few months that would be much harder with a newborn.  But I still wish he were here, my little might have been.  So today I am a little sad.  I'm sad, and I'm feeling guilty for not being even sadder.  When I am honest, I admit a baby right now would not have been an ideal scenario.  Then I feel guilty for not wanting it with everything I should.  But I'm trying to move on and keep to the brighter side of the loss.

One brighter element is that my cycle worked out so that I am ovulating today.  It's all a lot of odd little coincidences and practically miraculous occurrences that got me here today.  I was terrible with my pills last cycle, so when I missed one, AF came really early.  Then I seem to be having an almost normal person cycle.  To my knowledge, I have not ovulate before CD 20 since high school.  But yesterday, at CD15 (15!!!) I got a +OPK.  So today, on my old due date, I should be ovulating.  I don't really believe in things being meant to be, but I have to admit it feels a little that way now.

The OPK's were a strange story in themselves.  Usually, I have a faint second line all the time.  Then it get a little darker a few days before peak, I get two days of +'s and it goes back to being faint.  This time, I had two super faint lines, didn't test one day, and yesterday mornings test had absolutely no second line at all.  That afternoon I checked CM and found a huge glob of EWCM.  Very unusually for me.  My cervix also felt very soft and open, though I'm really terrible at judging it, so I did another OPK and it was clearly positive.  From nothing to positive in just a few hours.  I did another last night, just to be sure and it too was positive,  This morning it is negative again but I'll check once more this afternoon just to be sure.  I've been temping, the last few days as well, so hopefully I'll see a nice rise tomorrow.  Thank goodness for $0.89 tests!

With luck, I'll be in the 2ww tomorrow.  Well one week for me since I believe in testing as early and often as possible.  Yay again for cheap tests!

So there we are, sad and guilty and excited all at once.

OK, maybe not.

Ha, ha, ha!  So much for those resolutions.  To recap:

1.  This is the only one I'm doing well on, I think.  I ran the marathon.  I finished it, and made my time goal with 33 seconds to spare, at 4:14:27, so yay. And I ran the whole thing, which was my biggest goal, despite the fact that I don't think I could feel my legs at all from mile 24 on.  I felt them the next few days though!   And I am down 3 more of those 9 lbs, so 6 to go.

2.  Umm... yeah, anyway.  I'll try again.  And forget the ADD meds thing, not TTC, pregnancy, or nursing compatible so maybe in 3 years or so...

3.  Hmm.. am perhaps slightly better here.  Will work harder.

4.  Need I say anything?

5.  Ah!  Another with some progress.  He actually did sleep all night two nights this week.  And one of them I even managed to sleep all night as well and got 7.5 hours of continuous sleep for the first time in at least 3 years.  Heaven!  Of course he was up twice last night so...

6.  Have not begun work on this yet but I still have time.  I will do it.

7.  No progress yet.

8.  This is now dependent on me finishing another project as soon as possible so we can move into it.  It's not going well so far though.

9.  Well, I went off the pill and am now on CD11.  DO the math and you'll find CD1 was marathon day.  Lovely.  I missed one pill and she just showed up 12 hours later.  Much faster than usual.  Oh well.  I'll be having fun with OPK's soon.

Resolutions, Again

I went back and read all my blog entries from last year.  It made me realize how glad I am that I started this blog.  I'd forgotten so much of the little stuff.  But it was pretty depressing reading my old resolutions  are going, since I managed to stick to, well, none of them.  So this year's resolutions are much the same:

1.  The utterly cliched get into shape resolution.  Same as last year.  To be fair, I am in much better shape, after all I ran 20 miles a few weeks ago and plan to run 26 next Sunday so that is clearly saying something.  However the other part of my goal was to lose 17 lbs and I plateaued after losing about 9.  So this year (barring immediate pregnancy) I want to get off those last 9 lbs.   Really, I want to do this by May when TTC will begin in earnest.

2.  I will actually work while at work.  Same as last year.  Yep, this one was a spectacular failure.  I really will work harder on this.  I'm planning a schedule of sorts that sets specific times to write posts, check message boards, accomplish tasks at home, etc.  Hopefully it will help.  I'm also going to try more ADD meds.  The first two I tried made me nuts.

3.  I will be neater.    Same as last year.   Hoping the idea of the schedule will help here too.

4.  I will update my blogs more often.  This one is a variation on my resolution to send email updates more often.  I have a blog for family and friends that I post pictures on etc.  So I kind of kept that one.  I still need to be better about it.  I want to break it into two blogs, a running blog and a William blog.  That way people won't be utterly bored with the other entries.

5.  Get G- to sleep all night.  Similar to last year.  Well we have made a lot of progress since last year.  Most nights he is only up once and he now sleeps until 6:30 ish.  But he's 31 months old, he should be able to go all night sometime soon.

6.  Get tax info to the accountants ON-TIME so we can actually file a real return in April instead of October.  Related to this I want to get all out household expenses up and running on Quicken.

7.  Make Baby Books for G-.  I only made it though 4 months.

8.  Get our house under construction by July.

9.  Get pregnant and stay pregnant.

Hopefully I can do better this year than last.  Last year was the first time I had ever made resolutions and I really didn't do too well.  I'm determined to keep them this year.  So here goes nothing.  Oh and I've decided that if I am able to cross anything off this list as complete, I'll add a new one to take it's place.

Back, But Not as Planned

I'm back and I hope to post regularly again.  I won't even attempt everyday but I'm shooting for 3 times a week.

Unfortunately, I'm not back as a TTC'er just yet.  I may have mentioned on this blog before, my somewhat strong feeling about the ever-benevolent industry known as health insurance.  Right.  Well, it strikes again.  You see, we are both self-employed and currently have insurance continued through COBRA from my husbands last job.  That coverage will end in May so last month I began the rewarding and exciting process of securing private insurance for us.  G-'s was easy.  The children's hospital here offers a great plan that I wish I'd signed him up for ages ago.  We say about $200 for him alone making that switch.

But for us, it another matter entirely.  I could get us great coverage for the reasonable price of about $800 per month *splutter, cough* but that would specifically exclude any maternity coverage.  If I want maternity coverage I can get a crappy policy for about the same cost, or a decent but not great policy for over $1000 per month.

Or S- and I could form a "business," either by his existing business hiring me, or by starting a new one all together.  There are all kinds of problems with both scenarios but either would get us good coverage with maternity for $800 - $900 per month. 

The last option is to simply go without maternity coverage.  My midwife actually recommends this.  She says the cost of prenatal care and a normal home-birth is much lass than what we would pay for a year or two of maternity coverage.  But I just don't feel comfortable with that.  What if I need to transfer to the hospital?  What if something goes wrong?  No coverage would mean we would be out of our house for sure.  I just don't think I can take that risk.  Plus I feel like getting the coverage will help ensure I really don't need it, right?  It's the old umbrella adage... So until all that is worked out, I'm back on BCP's. 

In other news, I'm running a marathon in just under two weeks.  I'm dedicating it to my might-have-been baby.  I would have been 37w6d on race day.  I'm considering running with a pacing group that will have a 4:15 finish time.  I'm going to talk to the pace setter at the expo the day before the race and see if I think it would be good for me.

Finally, G- is nearly potty trained.  He decided he did not want to wear diapers anymore and after a few days of frequent accidents, he has now gone over a week with just one.  We are cheating a bit though.  Most of the time he poops in his diaper before we put on underwear in the morning.  He's really only pooped on the potty 2 times that I know of.  But I think it will happen soon.  Once he does it a few times in a row I think it will click.  On the bright side, He wore "just underwear" for all his naps last week and stayed dry, and this morning his pull-up was still dry from all night.  My baby is getting so big!  No if only he would just sleep all nigh. :)

Oh and as you probably know, Prop 2 did pass.  By an overwhelming 74%.  Ugh, what an ugly day that was.  I just don't understand it.  No one I know voted for it, not even my Republican Dad or Sister.  Even they thought it was a horribly sad day.  What is wrong with people?

We interrupt this hiatus to make a plea.

If Alito scares you, make your voice heard.  Please. 

http://saveourcourts.civilrights.org/action_center/index.html

Hiatus

Well, if you hadn't noticed, I'm taking a bit of a hiatus.  If your interested in keeping up with the dull day to day, totally un-political stuff email me, I have another blog with real names, etc., mostly for family.

Hopefully I'll be back in January tranforming this blog into a TTC#2 blog.  It's not a given yet, but that is my plan and S- doesn't seem like he'll protest too much.  So we'll try for a few months and if nothing happens or my cycles get wacky again, we'll go back to the RE in May.

One final political word.  If Prop 2 passes, I'm going to scream.