In Awe...

I am truly in awe of:

the IF bloggers out there! 

the grace in which you (IF bloggers) are enduring the challenges of IF and all that goes along with it

your spirituality and relationships with God

your profound faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ

your willingness to put it all out there, for anyone to read 

the community you have developed

your welcoming ways

And I want to thank you all, from the bottom of my heart for your blogs and posts…it truly makes this challenge at little easier to tackle.  As much as I hate the fact that any one has to go through IF I am grateful for the bloggers like you who are willing to share such an immensely private part of your lives with complete strangers…

Life: On Hold

Am I the only one who feels as though I tend to semi-subconsciously t to put my life “on hold” for IF?  I have some friends in Germany and DH and I have been talking about flying over there to visit them and tour the country for years now.  They called me one night last week to say hi leading to DH and I talking again about how we need to go over there and soon.  So the next day DH starts pricing airfare for this fall and you know what the first thing that popped into my head…”Should we really be planning that for Fall?  What if we are pregnant?  What if we are still trying?  What if we can’t afford it because it hasn’t worked?”  That’s sad!  Really sad!  I love, love, love to travel and have wanted to go to Germany for years (and Belgium as one of my closest friends growing up lives there now).  But this stupid IF comes in and distracts me from that.  It’s not just with this Germany…it’s with everything.  It is always in the back of mind, oh who am I kidding, it is always front and center in my mind.

Grad school.  I would really like to go back to school to get my Masters (especially since my job allows me/my spouse/my dependents to take up to 30 credits a year for free) but it will take 2 – 3 years of going nights and weekends and immediately my mind does the math – for example, if we get pregnant in February (yeah, right) I would only have 1 semester done by the time the baby is born and then what?  Because we cannot afford to have only one of us working full time we will have to put our child in day care.  Could I really handle working full time and go to school part time and barely ever get to see my child? Is it fair to ask my husband to work full time and then take care of a baby nights and weekends alone or with little help from me because I will be at class or I have homework to complete.  Is it fair to the child to not have its mother around much for the first few years?  

Making any sort of plans – short term or long term.  For example, I want to visit my sister in February to go tubing, shopping, and just hang out but I am leery to set a date as what if that is a weekend we should be trying, especially since I am so hopeful I will have lost enough weight for us to be able to work with the Dr.  Or my DH wants to set up an ice fishing trip with his buddies in March but I can’t tell him what weekends will or will not work.  (Because I am never regular and generally need to have it medically induced I don’t even have a general idea of what part of the month it will be.) My cousin/dear friend/like-a-sister wants to plan to go to a Vikings game in the fall 2011 with her, her hubby, my DH and me again, like we did this past fall (minus getting projectile puked on) but when she suggested it my very first thought was to IF and trying.  Or I have a cousin getting married this spring and don’t know how to RSVP because what if it’s that weekend (although I did already buy the most adorable shoes ever for the wedding!).

I also tend to put things on hold due to the monetary cost of IF.  We desperately need a new couch but I don’t want to make any major purchases until we are pregnant because I want every spare dollar to go towards trying as who knows how long it will take and how many cycles.  Even non-major purchases like getting clothes…I tell myself I should save the money I want to spend on new clothes right now and put it towards trying or for when I do get pregnant to buy maternity clothes - but on the other hand a valid reason to wait right now is once I reach my goal weight I will need all new clothes as I will be substantially smaller (down 2 lbs since last week!). 

I just feel like I am putting my life constantly “on hold”... 

Trying to stay "back on trac"

I have been trying pretty hard to stay “back on track” all week…and I think it’s going relatively well.  I am loving the WW eTools and my new WW cookbook (although I hate that it has the old Points and not Points+ on the recipes in the cookbook).   Monday we had orange chicken.  It was just ok.  A little bland.  Tuesday night we had honey-dijon pork chops and they were fabulous!  I think they would be even better if we marinated them for 48 hours instead of 24.  I even made a somewhat homemade honey mustard marinade for it!  Last night we had tequila-citrus chicken and it was great too, but again would have been better marinated longer than 24 hours.  Tonight?  Not sure what to make.  DH starts dart league tonight so we need to be on the road pretty close to when he gets home from work so it has to be quick.  Originally I wasn’t going to go with so I figured DH would grab supper at the bar but my friend/hairdresser “M” is going to be there so I’ll go drink water with her!  (Finally, someone to drink water with me…all last year when I’d go to darts with DH I would drink water so I could drive us home and DH could have a few beers but M and her DH live within walking distance of the bar, so M would have beers.  But not this year!  This year M is expecting!  Although I do hope this year I won’t get the “are you pregnant?” every time I order water!).  I am so, so, so tempted to go right after DH gets home from work and get pizza at the bar they are playing at tonight because they have fantastic pizza…but I’m going to try like the dickens to be good and stop at the grocery store on my way home and get something a little more WW friendly!  Just not sure what… 

It is so nice having my sister on WW at the same time.  She’s an inspiration and also helps me stay on track.  It’s great to be able to compare recipes, gripe about the new Points+, share ideas and have someone who knows what I am going through because she’s been there, done that.  I just wish I had started it when she did in January 2009! 

It is so tempting to get on the scale every morning to see if I was “on track” the day before or if “it’s working” but I know weight can fluctuate and I think I would be devastated to see that the hard work and effort the day before didn’t work…I think it would mentally throw me so far off track I’d be hitting up the bookstore on first floor of my building at work to get candy bars and non-diet pops all day long! 

I am just so darn impatient!  I can’t wait to get down to a weight when my Dr. will work with us again.  I can’t wait to try again.  I can’t wait to get that BFP!  I can’t wait to make “the announcement”.  I can’t wait to have a child.  I can’t wait to be a parent.  I can’t wait for my husband to be a Daddy!  Those are all the things I tell myself every time I get the urge to grab a candy bar or pop! They what I tell myself when I feel myself veering off track. 

Back on Track!

I am thrilled because I am back on track to losing the 25 – 30 lbs!  I weighed in this morning and have lost all the holiday weight plus a half pound!  I am down 20.5 lbs!  Woot!  Woot!  So there is maybe some hope for being able to “try” in February! 

I am a little nervous though that next week there won’t be much, if any, weight loss. We have a family Christmas on Saturday back home with my Dad’s extended family.  Which means it will be an entire weekend of eating at my parents.  That isn’t really a bad thing – at least not taste wise but even though both my sister and I are on WW my Mom still makes tons of food and food that doesn’t really work well with WW.  I know she does it because she loves us and is excited to be able to cook for more than my Dad and herself but it sure puts a strain on my self-control.  I am a huge “sweets” fan and not only does she always have the cookie jar stocked full but she sends us home with tins of cookies and goodies.  I was hoping that we would be able to go tubing over the weekend and spend some time outdoors, doing lots of activities to circumvent the goodies we will be eating but it is supposed to be extremely cold.  Grrr!  Stupid Minnesota Winters! 

I am really looking forward to our Family Christmas this weekend.  Growing up we used to get together with all my relatives on a regular basis – all holidays, birthdays, anniversaries – you name it we probably got together for it.  I loved it!  I loved spending time with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and millions of cousins.  Holidays were spent with my Mom’s side for lunch and my Dad’s side for supper.  My Mom’s side would be held at whichever Aunt felt like hosting it but my Dad’s side almost always was at the farm.  I loved spending time at the farm and to be honest family get-togethers just aren’t the same when they aren’t there.  My Grandpa (my Dad’s Dad) passed away when I was a senior in high school but my Grandma continued to live at the farm for many years after, until she wasn’t able to live on her own.  When she moved to town my Dad’s youngest brother bought the farm place and rented the house out so for the past number of years we could no longer get together there.   Then my uncle’s two eldest daughters graduated from college and they moved into Grandma’s house but now both of them are getting married and will be moving out by summer so they are having one last Christmas at Grandma’s House.  I am so stoked!  I only wish my Grandma were here to celebrate with us.  She passed away this past October and she will be truly missed by everyone there.  At least my Grandparents will be together in heaven watching over their family and will be with us in spirit.

Ugh (I have no creative title)

I love my husband with every fiber of my being.  He has so many qualities that I love and admire.  He truly is a wonderful person.  He is my soul mate.  He is my best friend.  He is my world.  I needed to start out with that – to preface what I am about to say in this post.   I feel guilty about even writing this post but I started this blog to express my feelings about this thing called infertility.  I don’t want this post in any way to come across as negative towards DH or that he isn’t the most wonderful man in the world.    

I am having a much harder time with IF than my DH appears to be having.  I will admit I am an overly emotional person.  I cry. Easily.  (Especially lately – I seem to cry for no apparent reason.)  I take things too personally and too much to heart.  But for as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a Mom.  Just like almost every other girl growing up it was a dream of mine.  I used to want at least 8 kids.  I still would love 8 kids but I know that is out of my control and will be happy with even just one child.  With every pregnancy announcement it gets harder and harder on me.  We had some friends get married this past fall and I know they were going to “try, but not try” right away.  So on New Year’s Eve we had plans to have supper and play cards with two couples.  One of which are the ones that just announced they were expecting and the other couple who just got married this past fall.   DH and I were in the car on our way and I just got this overwhelming, dreadful feeling that the couple who just got married were going to say they too were pregnant.  I told DH that I just didn’t think I could handle it if the other couple was preggo too.  And DH’s response was “You can’t keep getting upset every time someone announces they’re pregnant.  You need to just get over it.”  Really?!?  Are you kidding me?  Did he really just say that?  So I of course started crying and told him he had no right to say that to me and that he wasn’t the one that couldn’t get pregnant.  We both just sort of dropped it.  But it still irritates me and makes me a little mad.  I know he’s trying to be supportive.  And that it must be hard for him to see me upset and get upset so often and so easily.  He tries to tell me that it’ll happen.  He tries to tell me that even if it doesn’t we still have each other.  In his own way I know he’s trying and he probably has no idea what to say or do but it still hurt. 

I know I shouldn’t get so upset and really we have only tried for two cycles and it was just a year ago that we were even referred to the IF Drs.  But I just keep thinking I am not getting any younger and I don’t want to be an “old Mom”.  And I must admit I am not a very patient person.  Although you’d think I’d be used to waiting…it feels like I am always the last one to the party.  I waited forever for my DH.  I never imagined I would be in my 30s before meeting and marrying the love of my life.  I saw almost all my friends marry and have kids before I even met DH.  So I don’t know why I thought having a kid would come easily or quickly. 

Now that the holidays are over and done with it is back to WW and their new PointsPlus program (which I have a better attitude towards now than I did when it first came out…still not liking it but am not going to buck the change either).  I did already lose one of those pounds I gained over Christmas but still have a ways to go before the Dr. will work with us again…my goal is to be able to start with the Dr. again in February, which means I need to lose at least 2 lbs. a week between then and now.