My baby

My baby will turn 8 in just over a week. I'm not even sure how that happened. I can remember different times throughout my life when one parent or the other would say "It seems like it was only yesterday when you were born!" I always thought they sounded so stupid. I mean, I have been through it all too, and trust me, I did not grow up in the blink of an eye. Quite the opposite. Time crawled by so slowly that at times... like that last week before my 16th birthday.... where I was certain that time had completely stopped. Surely I was stuck in some strange time loop and my birthday would never come.

Two short years later (although they didn't feel short at that time) I gave birth to my first child. Just one month shy of my 18th birthday I became a mother and then it happened. Instead of crawling along at a snail's pace, suddenly life was whipping by at 200+ mph like it's the final lap of the Daytona 500. 13 hours and 40 minutes of labor seemed to stretch on for all of eternity and then after hearing three small words, the next 11 years have passed by in the blink of an eye.

Suddenly I understood what my parents had meant all those years all all it took was three small words. The first time I heard them 11 years ago it was "It's a girl!" Then again 8 years ago when I heard "It's a boy!" How is it possible that I just had to go bra shopping for that precious pink bundle that they just handed me moments ago? (It has to have been moments....not years) How could it be that my little baby boy they handed to me all wrapped in blue is now nearly as tall as I am? How is it possible that they have grown so fast? And how do I slow time down again so that I can keep them safe in the cocoon that is my home?

Well, scratch that.

I guess I don't have a job after all. At least not yet. The place where I was supposed to start next week decided they didn't have room on the schedule after all (one of the people they thought was leaving actually isn't) so I am just out of luck. I am going to Matt's company tomorrow and applying for a job there. We would be in different departments but our shifts would be similar enough that I could ride with him and the guys he carpools with. The money is great, especially for this area and it would REALLY help us to save up the money for fertility treatments or for adoption or both.

If you pray, please pray that I can get this job. We really need something and this is just about the only place that is hiring now. The benefit of all this is that now I won't be starting work before the kids leave for the summer. I will get to enjoy the last few days with them. I didn't want to give up that time, and honestly I was dreading going back to Pizza Hut. I think this other job would be a much better option for our family. We would both be working during the day (most likely) and be home with the kids in the evening.

School's out!

Today was the kids' last day of school. Of course even that couldn't happen without a little bit of drama. Not here anyway. lol Sierra got home and dug her report card out of her bookbag and found that they have given her the wrong one. I called the school and had to drive over and pick up her report card and return the one for the other little boy. Her grades weren't great, but they were mostly good. She has a 3.2 GPA. Will had a 4.0 again. He maintained that all year.

I have the kids until the 13th of June. They leave that day for 8 weeks with their father. The break is nice for 2-3 days, and then I HATE the rest of the summer. Of course this year with going back to work and moving into the new house and everything we'll be doing with that this year will probably pass a little more quickly then the past years have. At least I hope it does.

On the TTC front, AF showed up today and I'm getting pretty frustrated. I don't know what to think at the moment. Matt keeps changing the rules of the game on me. First he didn't want to do IUI or IVF. I decided to look into adoption and have been doing some research and getting pretty excited about that. Now he has decided that we need to try a few rounds of IUI with clomid and at least one round of IUI with injectibles and if none of that works move on to IVF before we consider adoption. And he wants to start IUI as early as January. We have to wait until then because first we have to take a few things. Pay off a few small debts and then I have to travel to West Virginia to get my things out of my storage unit. I hope to do that in September or October and then I want to wait until after the holidays until starting IUI. The first few rounds will be with Clomid and it doesn't like me very well. I don't want to be dealing with the side effects (or making anyone else deal with me) during the holidays.

Hopefully it works quickly and we have a healthy baby and can then adopt soon too. I want a large family and I can't go through this every time I am ready to have another baby.

Holidays

Holidays are always hard on me. Between my 6 miscarriages and losing my dad (all in the past 3 years) I have a hard time with holidays period, but Memorial Day is my Dad's favorite holiday (and mine too) so it's one of the harder ones. Add in the fact that I had to cancel my long awaited vacation and this weekend was just destined to be a bad one.

Last Sunday they announced that they were going to be doing a dedication service this week for one of the new babies in the church. I love church. I love babies. I usually love dedication services but this one I had been dreading since they announced it. Then I woke up this morning and I'm spotting. No doubt about it, AF is going to be making her appearance tomorrow or the next day right on time. So I am ovulating late, have a short LP again, I'm out yet another month.....and I skipped church this morning. There was NO WAY I could sit through a dedication service today. I just don't have the strength.

We are going to the lake later for a cookout with friends. Their 4 year old is convinced there is a baby in my belly. I actually let that get my hopes up for this cycle. I should have realized it was just because she has a 6 month old brother. Or because I am fat. That's probably more like it. I carry my weight around my hips and stomach and I've really let myself go, so I guess if I was honest I probably do look pregnant. Especially to a 4 year old. I'm going to be working really hard to change that starting Tuesday. Tomorrow we are doing hamburgers on the grill and potato salad and stuff like that so I am going to enjoy the cookouts and then I am going to throw myself back into diet and exercise and get this weight off once and for all.

Once AF starts in force I am going to be taking my prenatal and my folic acid still. I am also adding my B6 back in for the LP and trying vitex. It's supposed to regulate your cycle and help you ovulate earlier. I've heard great things about it and I ordered it a few months ago but ehen never started it. Now I am going to try it. Hopefully it helps. Even if it just relieves some of my AF cramping and my PMS symptoms I'll consider it a success. (It is suppose to do all that.)

How

I know that there are people out there that have been trying much longer than I have. I know that there are people who have gone through so much more than I have on this journey. What I don't know is how they do it. The past three years has taken so much out of me and turned me into a very bitter and angry person. I don't know how to change that either. I don't like it, but I can't change it. Right now should be one of the happiest time in my life. I mean....we are buying our first home I made it to one of my big goals. Homeowner before the age of 30. I did it, and I should be happy. Instead, all I can think about is the fact that I still don't have a baby yet. At least not here with me. I have six babies in heaven.

I feel broken and I don't know how to fix it. The doctors say it's just bad luc and that it likely won't happen again, but then it does. It happens again every single time and they can't tell me why. There is no reason that has been found (yet anyway). All my tests are normal so far so there is nothing I can do to "fix" the problem.I don't know how to deal with that. When there is a problem I want to know what it is and how to fix it so that I can do whatever it takes to correct the problem. When noone can tell me how to do that, I don't know....it seems impossible to deal with. I am terrified to keep trying because I am so afraid that I am going to just continue to have one miscarriage after another, and I really think even one more might push me over the edge. I am just as afraid to stop trying though because I don't know that I can face never having another baby. Yes, I have two great kids, and I am forever grateful for them, but I really thought I would have a housefull of babies by now. Then I survived infidelity and a divorce that put those plans on hold for a while and now that I have found someone else, now I am struggling with something I didn't even know existed.

Secondary Infertility

How can you be infertile when you have already had kids? How is it that your body just forgets how to stay pregnant? Getting pregnant isn't a problem. I've proven that. 6 pregnancies in 3 years proves that getting pregnant definitely isn't an issue. Staying that way is a whole different story though. I guess it's time to try to do more research. Find more information to print off....more tests to have the doctor run. I should have went to medical school! Then I could just order my own tests and not have to pay obsene amounts of money to my reproductive endocrinologist.

Remembering my babies

One thing about my miscarriages that has always bothered me is that people seem to think that you should get over a miscarriage in very little time. If I had been further along, there could have been a funeral and a headstone and a place to go to remember my babies. Because I don't have anyplace like that (at the moment anyway) I decided that for Memorial Day I was going to buy flowers and take them to the baby land section of the local cemetery and decorate the graves of "forgotten" babies. Now, don't read that the wrong way. I don't for a single instant think that any of these babies were actually forgotten. I think more than likely the parents have either moved away, or else have gotten older and just can't get to the cemetery anymore or something. I mean....some of these "babies" would be nearing 40 today and so their parents would easily be in theirs 60's, 70's or even 80's now. After many trips past the cemetery (the local bike trail runs just along the cemetery fence line) and several visits to it, I've noticed that these graves are never decorated, no one seems to be visiting them.....the appear to be "forgotten".

Since we have had 6 miscarriages we bought flowers to decorate the 6 graves that seemed to be the longest "forgotten". The oldest graves in this section that seem to be "forgotten". Tonight we took the flowers to the cemetery and decorated the graves and then took pictures of each one. It breaks my heart seeing that some of these graves don't even have proper headstones so I have made it my mission to save up my "fun" money and work with the cemetery to anonymously purchase headstones for these babies. They all died in the 70's and it's pretty obvious that for whatever reason, they still don't have headstones. There are two others that died in the 80's or 90's that don't have headstones either and it breaks my heart, so since I can't do that for my babies, I want to do it for these. I know it will take me a while to save the money and I will have to do it one baby at a time but I just feel like it's something I need to do.



Once we get moved into our new house we are going to build our memorial garden and then I will have a place to go to remember our babies and put flowers for them and what not, but I really think this is going to become an annual tradition. I am going to continue my walks past the cemetery and I am going to watch the other "newer" graves and next year I will put flowers on ALL of the "forgotten" graves....not just these 6. I'll probably check the cemetery in the town where we are buying the house too and see if there are any "forgotten" babies there that need flowers too.

On the TTC front.... I *think* I am around 5 dpo. My breasts are SOOOO sore and very itchy too! I can't really judge off the pain alone because my breasts get sore EVERY cycle but they don't usually itch. And they really seem to hurt more this time than usual. Hopefully it's a good sign. I'm sure not holding my breath though. After three years, I really can't get my hopes up anymore. It hurst too much to be wrong month after month.

I should be....

I should be leaving for vacation tomorrow night. I'm not. We canceled our vacation. I've been trying to take a vacation and get back home for a fun visit since I moved out here three years ago and every single time something goes wrong. It SUCKS! Sometimes I hate being an adult. lol

On the bright side of things, we did get the house. We are closing on June 30th. That is why we canceled the vacation....to make sure we had the money for the down payment. We also bought a used stove and refrigerator for the new place. It's the ones that are in the house now. She originally was taking them with her, but the place she is going to already has new appliances. It's a side by side fridge and an electric range with a double oven in it. I'm really excited about that. They aren't new, but they are "new to me" and in much better shape than the appliances that I currently have.

We are putting a privacy fence up at least along the back side of the property and possible all the way around. Matt wants it all the way and I have mixed feelings. Because we are going to put a hot tub in the yard I kind of agree that I like the idea but at the same time privacy fences always kind of screamed snob to me. lol I just wanted chain link, but we are going to compromise. I think most of the yard is being fenced, but the front won't be. I don't know.....I guess time will tell for sure what we do. lol

We are also planning to put in a fish pond, gazebo and memorial garden. It will have a stone for my Dad in it and a plaque or some sort or memorial for our babies we have lost. I've always hated not having something for them, so now that we are going to own, we are going to build that in. I'm excited about it. I know it's going to take quite a while though because stuff like that is really expensive! lol It'll be a work in progress and it's probably always going to be growing and changing.

I am also going to be planting a garden but that won't happen until NEXT spring just because we are getting into the house to late to plant much this year. We will probably plant some bulbs in some of the flower beds this fall, but the actual garden won't be planted until spring.

And to update on the TTC front..... I am in the 2ww again. Not feeling too hopeful at the moment though. Sunday night I was at a friend's house and his four year old step-daughter decided that I have a baby in my belly. She wanted to know the baby's name was. She argued about it for a long time and I kind of thought maybe it was just because she just got a baby brother recently (he's 6 months old). He called me later to say he hoped she hadn't upset me and that he really didn't know what had gotten into her. He's never seen her act that way with anyone. Part of me really hopes she knows something I don't (I ovulated on Saturday so it's possible) but I am also being realistic and not getting my hopes up.