Family stories

As I said yesterday, DH's relatives were in town on Tuesday and many family stories were told. One story was about his great aunt and uncle. They never had any children. His family didn't say whether they were infertile or not, but just that there no children and that they considered adopting fromItaly, but never did. His grandparents had three boys. Apparently, when his grandma was pregnant with the youngest, her relatives suggested she give the baby to her sister since she already had two kids and her sister had none. Of course that didn't happen. But I did think it was funny to think that sometimes the relatives of us infertile don't always have it easy.

In other news, I am loving the iPad! It is a little easier to read blogs than leave comments, but I am trying to figure that out.

Random

1. I had a great weekend with my cousin, aunt, gramma, and mom. We saw several colleges and it made me wish for my college days again! Plus it was just great to see my family for a few days and do some shopping. Right now her top choice is USC. Any Trojans out there?

2. I have an iPad! It is so much fun, and I've only had it for a day so far.

3. AF came over the weekend, so we are officially one cycle away from our next IUI. We go to the shots class next week.

4. DH's uncle and cousin were in town yesterday. Again, it was good to see family and his parents and uncles told all these fantastic stories about the family. They should really write down some of this history.

5. One thing that was revealed is that his mom and uncle use different versions of the family tomato sauce recipe. DH's grandparents owned an Italian restaurant, so he was always adamant that we follow the recipe to the letter. I didn't want to really alter it, just that it didn't make much sense to buy canned whole tomatoes and then crush them by hand. If you are going to use canned tomatoes, why not just get them already crushed? Anyway, his mom uses a blender! So I made a batch tonight and broke a few rules in the recipe.

Cousins

This weekend I am heading out to Cali to take my youngest cousin on a college tour trip. She is about to start her senior year of high school and gets terrific grades, so she is trying to figure out her options. Neither of her parents went to college, so while they try to be supportive, they don't know the questions to ask or what to do. So I am meeting them for a short trip. I am not that close to this cousin mainly due to our age difference as we are quite a like in many ways. Our grandmother calls her "Missy with a mouth" to point out that I am the quieter one of the two.

This morning I realized that my oldest niece is starting 8th grade. Assuming we get pregnant in our next few IUIs, the baby would be born near the end of her 8th grade year or beginning of her freshman year in high school. This cousin was born my freshman year in high school. So they would have a similar age difference. Wow.

Book club

So I am preparing myself for my book club tonight. I was thinking about the need to do so a few days ago. One of the women in my book club, while lovely in other ways, has a little boy and can't stop talking about him. Seriously can't stop talking about him. There are other women in the group with babies, and it is a casual book club so we definitely talked about things other than the book. But it was not until she joined that the conversation made a major turn to all things baby. And the particular book we are discussing tonight has a character whose storyline includes miscarriages, so the topic could come up in our discussion. So I was already preparing myself mentally for this night.

And now I am incredibly grateful to my other friend from book club, who sent me an email yesterday that this woman is pregnant again. I can't imagine how the baby talk could get worse, but I'm sure it will. This other friend has babies conceived with help, so she knows this journey and was kind enough to give me warning so I am not blindsided with a pregnancy announcement in book club. Thank you!

Projects

I've been working on several projects. First, I put up a clothes line in our laundry room. I like to line dry many of my clothes. It is both gentler on my clothes and makes them last longer, and it saves on electricity from the dryer. But we don't have that much room in our laundry area, so setting up the little wooden contraption to hang up clothes took up all our space. And an outdoor clothes line is not really feasible with this weather of sudden rainstorms. So now we have something that hangs from the ceiling. It is perfect! Most of the time, it is high and out of the way. We don't even notice it.



But then when we are doing laundry, we can use a pulley to get it down, hang our clothes, and then put it back at the top of the ceiling and out of the way again.



The pictures aren't really very good, but when it is all the way up, I can walk completely under the clothes that hang from it. It does help that we have a high ceiling in the laundry area, although if you are thinking of doing the same thing, your ceiling does not have to been too high. Actually, if ours was much higher it wouldn't be as convenient b/c then I might have trouble reaching it b/c it only comes down so far from the ceiling.

And it was super simpler to install. I am not handy at all and did it mostly by myself. The hubby helped by mainly providing an extra pair of hands to balance it. I did have to do some improvising with duct tape, but it is working out really well. I did decide to put it directly into a ceiling stud rather than the hollow part of the ceiling as their directions recommended. Wet clothes can get kinda heavy after all.

My other project is more crafty. As you may remember from a few months ago, my area suffered massive floods. The saying "We Are Nashville" was taken as a rallying cry and they have t-shirts and posters and whatnot to raise money for victims with this logo. I created a pattern for a crocheted blanket. I'm going to make a few more and give them to flood victims.

Religious Freedom

My community has been in the news lately due to a Muslim group that wants to build a new mosque. I think we should support the right of people to follow whatever faith tradition they think is right, but I guess many people don't agree and there have been a number of protests of this mosque. Today I attended an interfaith walk that started at a Methodist church, passed several other churches, and had opening prayers given by someone from my Catholic church and a Jewish community. It ended at an Islamic center/mosque a few blocks from my house.

Despite being an overly hot Southern July afternoon, it was a wonderful experience. Everyone out to show support for peace, justice, and religious freedom. The best moment was when the owner of a gas station that was on the route figured out what the walk was about and kept running back and forth with handfuls of ice cold bottled water. If I wasn't already sweating buckets, I would say it filled with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Dates

Yes! You are all so right and thanks for reminding me that I need to forget about the calendar and let things fall into place. So we are full steam ahead on our end. We would do IUI next cycle, but we also have a fantastic vacation planned for August, so we are just waiting for that. And that is worth waiting for because we will have a blast.

And I did feel better about my thoughts regarding the dates b/c I spoke with my older sister about the wedding and she is worried she will have to leave one kid behind if it coincides with the state soccer championship. I mean, I know her two older kids are the stars of their very competitive teams and soccer is important to them, but I can't imagine there is much in a 12-year-old's life that is more important than attending their uncle's wedding. Who knows, the team may not even make it to the finals next year.

I do think the wedding date would work well around the hubby's MBA graduation. As long as they stick to late May, we should be fine. And the college where I did my graduate degree was pretty flexible about letting grad students walk whenever they wanted to, so he should be able to have that experience regardless.

In other news, I need to figure out how to stew and can tomatoes! We are getting so many from our CSA. There are a few from our Topsy Turvy, but they are quite small (I think it is due to the type of tomato we bought and not the planter) so not much to cook up. We've already made a double batch of the hubby's Italian family pasta sauce and meatballs and also lasagne. Today we got 6 more pounds of tomatoes! And zucchini. Who knew zucchini was so plentiful? We have some parties this weekend and will be bringing some zucchini bread to the hosts.

Oh brother

Remember that little brother I mentioned who just got engaged? Well, he hasn't quite set a date yet, but they have narrowed down the possibilities. And wouldn't you know it, they are settling on a time that would coincide with a due should our next IUI cycle be successful. I don't know what to do. Part of me feels like I should put it off because I can't miss my brother's wedding. But part of me is done with putting it off. And then there is the little voice that says it may not work anyway, so why bother putting anything off at all?

In other news, he did ask DH to be an usher in the wedding. I thought that was so cute!

Next steps

Thanks for your advice! I did call in the morning and they got my records. So we were all set for our appointment. The bad news is hubby's results from the sperm penetration were the worst results he's gotten yet. This time even the count was low, which he did not have a problem with before. And the SPA results were below what they should be.

But the doctor didn't think a few IUI cycles with FSH injectibles would be a total waste of money, so we are going down that route. He would start us with my next cycle, but we will be on vacation right at the crucial time, so we will start around the end of August. The next step is to schedule our FSH class. My other doctor appointment today was with a dermatologist for my poison ivy rash (ugh, still here, starting another set of steroid pills). She also gave me a steroid shot and when I was leaning over for that shot, I couldn't help but think soon I'll be getting shots for something else entirely!

Records

I need you advice. We had our first appointment with a new RE a few weeks ago. At that time, the appointment was not as useful as it could have been since he had not yet received my medical records from my previous RE. He did get my husband's and did an ultrasound and medical history from us, but wanted to see what my lab results and post op notes from my lap. I went back to my previous RE to get them to send the records again, but as of Wednesday, they had not yet gotten them. Long story short, my first attempts to request the records went to the wrong office and then I used the wrong form at the right office. I think on Wednesday I finally did it right, but am not sure if that is enough time for the records to make it over to the new RE.

In the meantime, DH had his sperm penetration analysis. Our follow up appointment is Monday afternoon, when we will get the SPA results and decide what our next steps are. DH thinks we should reschedule if my records did not make it over there yet because he does not want to pay this doctor if he won't have all the information he needs to be really helpful. I am hesitant to put off this appointment. What would you do?

Five years

This morning of all days, one of my FB friends posts something about a recent trend in people having their wedding at retail establishments. She thought it was quite tacky to have your wedding in a Taco Bell or Cold Stone Creamery. Well, I have to agree on having the ceremony there, but one of my favorite memories from our wedding day was the private time we spent after the reception at Cold Stone. Who knew you would actually spend so little time alone with your spouse on your wedding day?

The photographers had left us alone by then, but here's a picture of my second favorite dessert we had five years ago today.



Even though the past few years have been hard and not gone the way we planned, I'm glad I have you to walk beside me on this journey.

Here's to another five (or 50) years. Let's go celebrate with good ice cream!

Thoughts

My poison ivy is getting better, but now I think I have some other rash. That leads me to my rant about my doctor. Through my employer, I am stuck with using doctors from a particular hospital. Every visit with these doctors (except for my RE) has been a big pain. First it took 3 months to establish a primary care doctor. That was a long time, but I figured once I was established as a patient then it would be much easier. Nope. I've never been able to get a same day appointment when I am sick and call first thing in the morning. I really do not understand their system. How are you ever to see a doctor when you are actually sick if you need to make appointments 3 weeks in advance? The person I spoke with today to make an appointment actually told me if I needed to see a doctor immediately, I should go to the ER! How stupid is that. I am not in a medical emergency, so why tell me to clog up the ER. Although if I don't get my rash looked at before their next available appointment, it may turn into an emergency.

The saving grace for me is that my employer has a walk-in clinic for employees only where we can get free care in the mornings. It's meant to get us healthy and back to work without missing much work. But it is only for employees, so my husband can't use them when he is sick. I went to this clinic last week and today for my rash. The nurse who saw me said I was beyond what care she can provide and said I need to a see a dermatologist. She even admitted that it would be forever to see a dermatologist at this hospital and was so nice to call an outside dermatologist who can see me on Monday. Only a few more days of this misery.

Happy Independence Day!

Here's a happy fourth of July! We are heading out soon to watch a riverfront concert and see some fireworks. It will be hot, but hopefully not too bad down near the river.

In honor of our nation's birthday, I have a question for my fellow bloggers. Who is your favorite founding father? I would have to say James Madison. He was instrumental in having the Constitution take the shape it did, including the Bill of Rights. Obviously it wasn't perfect then and that's why we've needed 17 amendments since then, but it has stood the test of time pretty well.

Last night DH and I were watching a story about the Revolution on the History channel. I left to read after a while and past our normal bedtime he comes in the room and says that the colonists won the war and Washington became president. LOL. I was thinking, were you doubting the outcome of that? It was funny that he wanted to see the end even though of course he knew what happened.

Siblings

I'm sure many of you know how hard it can be to see our siblings have children. As much as I love my nieces and nephews and am happy for my siblings, they can still make me fall apart. But the thing is for me, it varies by sibling.

My older sister is the closest in age to me; only two years older. Truth be told, growing up I always imagined we would have kids around the same age and the cousins would all play together. It didn't quite work out that way as she got married almost right out of high school and had three kids pretty quickly. I had just barely started dating DH when the third was born and I was in no position to think of having a baby as a real thing that I would do. Those older three are of course dear to me, but they don't bring up the same emotions of sadness and envy that are so familiar to all of us with IF. It is her youngest that brings these feelings up the most out of her kids. It was his birth that got me and DH thinking of children as something in our someday future to something that could be reality. And as he is growing quickly, I am reminded of how long it has taken us.

My younger sister's daughter was heartbreaking to me. She is adorable and of course I am happy for them, but still I cried myself to sleep the night my niece was born. This sister is 6 years younger than me, they married after we did, and made a very public announcement of when they would start TTC so it was apparent they had no problems. As we had already started trying by then, I see this niece as the one that could have been mine. I could have a toddler by now; a little girl who is starting to talk and makes funny faces and likes to sing. My sister recently quit her job to be a stay at home mother and they are in the process of buying a house, so I am bracing myself for when they will announce she is pregnant again.

One brother is in Afghanistan right now, so I don't think there is much opportunity there for him to make a baby.

And then there is my baby brother. Although our age difference has kept us from being too close, he has a special place in my heart. See, when my younger siblings were real little, the three older kids (myself, my older sister, and a relative our age who lived with my dad and stepmom) would take care of the three younger ones. Since the numbers worked out, we split them up. I would take charge of my baby brother. So I always feel like I have to look out for him.

Yesterday he announced he is getting married. To a woman who already has a three year old. I'm happy for him and glad he has her in his life. But now even my littlest brother will be a parent before me. Sigh.

What does summer mean?

What does summer mean to you? To me, it means a lot things: picnics, Shakespeare in the Park (one of my fave things), vacations.

Unfortunately, ever since I moved to my current location, it has also meant some type of medical problem (usually a skin rash). We moved into our current house (and current city) in July 2007. That first week, I got poison ivy clearing some overgrown bushes. I've had it before and it wasn't that bad, although it didn't make for a very good introduction to the house. It got even worse a month later when I was bit by a brown recluse spider. I had a rash all over my body and couldn't sit down due to pain at the bite site (my rear end).

Fast forward to July 2008. We were meeting my ILs for dinner and I had a headache, but it could have been just a long day-type headache. Nothing serious. I had to cancel an out of town meeting the next day due to what I thought was a bad migraine. The next thing I knew, I as being treated for viral meningitis.

June 2009 I was working out in our flower beds and was bitten by an unidentified bug. I had a small localized rash that lasted for a few weeks, but never got very serious. I thought maybe my bad luck was waning.

Now the poison ivy is back. With a vengeance. Yes, I knew it was a possibility since I knew we had poison ivy plants in that area before. But I tried very hard to look for the leaves as I was working in the yard and didn't see anything. This time the rash is much worse. I had a blister the size of a marble on my arm and several other minor spots in other places. Today I noticed it on my eyelid. I've had my eyes checked and it is not on my eye at this point. I've started a steroid pack and have a prescription for steroid eye drops just in case.

I don't know if this is a sign that we should move to another city or what. I'm hoping my only medical condition next summer is pregnancy. I will gladly be full term in the miserable weather of August here if that's what it took.