My positive attitude tested

The morning radio show I listen to is hosted by 2 upbeat ladies that often have fun, impulsive topics that keep me entertained while I’m trying to wake up and start working.

2 weeks ago, one of the ladies, luckily the married one, started freaking out because someone said they thought she was pregnant because she was peeing all the time. She had the producer run out and buy every brand of HPT’s she could find. Eventually the radio host peed on about 5 sticks and yep, right there on the radio it was announced that they were all +. This was a big surprise to her and she started bawling uncontrollably. The shock has since worn off and she is now excited.

I was estimating she was maybe 6-7 weeks given that she was peeing all morning and drinking tons of water before POAS and still got strong +. The pictures were posted on the radio’s web site.

None of this really bothered me. Many people find out in the 5-7 week mark.

I had been listening for 2 weeks for her to say how far along she has discovered herself at.

This morning, she was talking about having her first u/s and her husband’s lack of reaction (he is out of town right now). I came in on the middle of this conversation and thought awwww, the first u/s. She must have seen the little bean and probably a heart beat. Then they said…it’s a Boy.

What!?!

To see the gender, she must be at least 18 weeks. I checked out the u/s picture on the radio’s website and the LO is not as defined as some of our TTC grads that update with their 20 week u/s. I’m guessing 18-19 weeks (they didn’t say while I was listening). This means she was roughly 16 weeks when she found out.

Quick math tells me she is due right around my Anniversary. When I wanted to be due.

Which I would have been if I would have O’d on time and obviously got pregnant.

But this was the point at which my body decided to rebel against any plans I had and stop Oing.

Humph!

I reserve the right to pout for a little while then it will all be fine.

Still on my quest to be positive and look on the bright side of life. It takes practice.

Honesty Award!

Wow. Thank you for the award T! I feel so surprised and honored when I'm thought of. Sorry if some of my 10 honest things resemble yours in anyway, you jarred my thoughts and I kept saying "me too"!

I'm trying, but I can't seem to get the picture of the award to show up.


The rules:
1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with "Honest Scrap." Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whew* 10 thing huh? I'll try.

1) I always felt like I had a strong work ethic but now find myself more on blogs, message boards, email and other web sites while at work than I should be.

2) As of last week, I've somehow gotten up to 190 lbs. on my 5'4'' frame. (how's that for honest). down 2 lbs. already. My husband says "it's OK, 20 lbs of that is boobs". HAHA. Thanks Hun. Somehow doesn't make me feel any better.

3) I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

4) I feel like I am supposed to do something grandiosely important with my life. Like single handedly change the world. But, I don't know what my avenue to do this is so, I do nothing which creates great turmoil in me.

5) I carry a great amount of guilt that I cannot give my husband his old life back. He misses his kids tremendously and is depressed/mad that he was pushed out of their lives. I would do anything to give him his family back.

6) I've had 2 best friends since High School, Emily and Olivia. They and my sister were my bridesmaids. I have a hard time coming to terms that they have moved on. From my perspective, I think our friendships are stronger than they do, at least Emily. I'm still hurt that she was married 7 years ago and asked Olivia (and some other ladies) to be bridesmaids, but I wasn't. I thought I had gotten over it.

7) Although I'm sure I have no hope of Oing without help, I'm still using the OPK's. Lord help me. I think it makes me feel like I'm doing something productive.

8) I do my best thinking in the shower or on the pot. Maybe it's something to do with the bathroom.

9) I too am a scrapbooker. I haven't done much in sooo long. I'm currently in the stage of buying more supplies to make me feel like I'm actually doing something. Soon, I'll be staring at layouts in magazines to try to be inspired.

10) I love to sing out loud to Broadway musical numbers. Yes I'm sort of geeky that way.

So for my nominees. I have to cheat a little. I'm so new to this Blogging game that I only have 3 people I follow. Yes, I need to get out there more. One sent me the award and, at the same time, sent the award to another blogger I follow.
So.... Shot Gun, It's just you.
Have fun!!

I got to get Gary turned on

I have been reading quite a bit about how the subconscious can control our everyday behavior, even physically.
Highly interestingly, our Hypothalamus, who I will call Gary, is extremely sensitive to stress. Not only our day-to-day stress like work deadlines, fights with the spouse, traffic, etc., but also deep rooted, ingrained in our system stress such as traumatic events, self-esteem issues, family issues, fears, etc.
According to the book I’m reading, these deep rooted issues are buried in our subconscious. The same book, these unresolved issues can cause Gary to “turn off”. One of the many functions of Gary is to tell the body to release LH and FSH. I have also seen mentions of weight gain when there are problems with Gary’s performance.

Hummm.

My very own conclusions: IF my Gary is not working, my body will not tell release LH and I will not ovulate. Also, it could account for gaining 14 pounds in the last 8 months.

4 months and still no O in sight.

Now to find out what is turning Gary “off” and get him turned back "on".

You can watch time fly

My Grampy used to say "If you want to see time fly, watch a child grow."
So true!

My step daughter (S) turns 18 today.

I have been working on scrapbooks for all 3 kids, documenting their lives. The problem has been, I wasn't there for the beginning. S got the bug to scrapbook her life's highlights so she and I spent all New Years day and last Sunday sorting, scanning, copying, and transferring pictures from both our house and her Mother's. It was very time consuming and emotional.

I hid it well, but it was a hard emotional journey to go through all these old pictures seeing K's life before me. Especially the picture documentary of S's birth. Seeing young, skinny, dark-haired K beaming proud in a hospital gown holding his 10 minute old daughter was hard.

I've seen pictures before, but so many of them, in that context was difficult. Especially since I'm having trouble giving him that experience again.

In another way, it was nice to embed these 18 years worth of pictures into my brain almost like they are memories for me. In my mind, can pretend to have been there from the beginning of their lives.

Now comes the difficult part. We will need to find the perfect balance of teaching and guiding with allowing S to grow, explore and fall on her own. It is hard to know there will be times we will have to stand back and allow her to fall.

Mind Games

I'm sorry I've been gone for a while. I'm trying not to think about anything.

My blood work came back. There's nothing wrong with me. The Dr.’s message was everything is normal and the platelet levels are nothing to worry about.

Platelets! Who the hell was talking about platelets? I thought we were looking at hormone levels.

So I called my Dr.’s office back and got them to fax me my results. My platelets are a tad elevated. 409 and normal range is something-or-other - 400. Big whoop.

What I found strange is my LH was 1.0. The reference ranges that were given were state Males low range is 1.2 – something; and LP levels are 1.2 - something. I HAVE LESS LH THAN A MAN! Isn’t that something? Obviously not.

The good news is my FSH was 3.3. So I’m glad I’m not going into early menopause.

So the consensus is… if there isn’t anything wrong with me physically, I must have an emotional or mental issue. According to the books I am supposed to read (they are actually very interesting) this is not all that uncommon.

Also, the patches of EWCM I keep having are keeping me hopeful enough to keep from calling a new Dr.

CD 54 and counting….



P.S. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!

I'm too FAT

…to get pregnant. She didn’t say that in so many words, but it was the stripped down bottom line conclusion.
I saw my Dr., Dr. H, yesterday and she agreed that I’m not ovulating. She did order blood tests to see if there is any thyroid, pituitary, or ovary problems, but said she highly doubts it. Dr. H said that it is unknown if hormonal imbalances cause weight gain or if weight gain causes hormonal imbalances. But that making sure I’m getting the proper nutrients is a great first step.
When I went in to the office, the first thing they did was the dreaded weighing. Why do Dr.’s scales always show more than the bathroom scales? In the morning I was 6# less than the Dr.’s scale showed. With the Dr. scale my Body Mass Index is 32.8. with my bathroom scale in the morning, in the nude, BMI is 31.9. Over 30 for women on the BMI is considered obese.
Dr. H recommended this book and loaned me this book.
Dr. H is also big into the stop focusing on TTC and you will get pregnant school of thought. How do you concentrate on not concentrating on something? She was promoting the whole mind-body connection thing, so when reserving the 1st book at the library, I found this one and this one and reserved them too. I'll pick them up tonight.
The last one only came out a few months ago. They seemed to fit into the whole conversation that Dr. H and I had. She did also use the term IF which is very scary to hear out loud. She did say if the diet and relaxing don’t kick things into gear that I’ll have to go to a RE or an OB that deals with IF to start on meds.
I’m really hoping now that something comes back on my blood work that can easily be fixed.
In the mean time, no sweets (communist at Christmas time), a fruit and veg. at every meal, reading…..

…..and relaxing….

…..hard to do when I burst into tears at any given moment.

10 years gone by

I have been reflecting a lot this past year on what was happening 10 years ago. 1998 was a big year for me. I still lived at home but was working full time, paying my own way through college and performing with a World Class Independent (the top of the pecking order) WGI affiliated winterguard. I was never to know at the beginning of the year what a turning point the year would be in my life.
* January: I obviously didn’t know it at the time, but my youngest future step-son was born.
* March 9: my well loved, adored, favorite Uncle died of cancer.
* April 4: I performed my last competitive winterguard show. The rules don’t (at least they didn’t in 1998) allow you to compete past a certain age, termed “aging-out” once you retire you are an “age-out”. We were retired at the ripe old age of 22.
* Summer: I received a phone call from my mentor, instructor and WGI hall-of-famer, Stanley, who asked me if I’d be interested in teaching a high school colorguard during the fall. He would choreograph during band camp and I would be there for all the rehearsals and competitions to run the group. I was ecstatic that he would pick ME and that I would have this alone time with the great Stanely! Of course I took the job.
* August 13-16: I went to Disney World (Best place ever) with a friend to watch DCI (Drum Corps International) Finals, and to “run-into” a friend that I decided I wanted attention from. In the fledgling days of the internet, before Expedia and Travelocity, I put this whole trip together for the 2 of us. Hotel, flight, car rental, event tickets, Disney passes and SeaWorld tickets for just over $500. I’m still pretty proud of myself.
* August 24: Band Camp started for the high school group I was referred to. I was introduced to the rest of the staff, which consisted of a percussion instructor, my future husband.
* Mid November: I realized I was wishing to have more and more attention from this percussion instructor (K) and started, uncharacteristically and shamelessly, flirting. It paid off.
* November 25: I received a call at work from K asking me out to dinner. Funny story – my Mom and I worked at the same place and she was covering the phones that day. She transferred the call to me and whispered across the isle to me “It’s a BOY on the phone!!”
* November 28: Our/My first date. We’ve been inseparable ever since.
* November 30: First work day after our date. He sent me flowers! I have never been so red in my life!
* December 23: We exchanged gifts. I got him this, you know a cymbal, like on a drum set. I didn’t know at the time, how perfect for him it was. He said later that at that moment he realized how much I already knew him and his ex never would have thought of it. He knew then he would marry me. We/I had our/my first kiss. (Yes I was a late bloomer.) He was a gentleman and waited a whole month of dating before kissing me or holding my hand. He later confessed he still felt guilty because he had been married for so long.