CD1

OBVIOUSLY.  It would have been too easy, too perfect, to get another BFP almost exactly 2 years later.  Stuff like that only happens in the movies.  Or to fertile people. 

All morning I have been arguing with myself.  There is the one half of me who is bummed, sarcastic, and insecure.  Then there is the other half of me who sees no reason to complain: there is a perfect little 15-month old peacefully sleeping upstairs after making pie dough and playing with her babydoll and running errands with me this morning.

Over the weekend, I caught myself several times thinking, wow I have finally hit my mom stride.  I work out every day, eat well, work full time, practice yoga, make all 98% of our meals from scratch (aside from the maybe one or two times we go out to eat every month), and be the best mom I can be to M.  I recently got this cookbook, and I have been way reinspired to make nearly everything homemade, from scratch.  Over the weekend, among normal meals, I made granola, 2 loaves of bread, pasta dough into ravioli (enough for 2 meals), breadcrumbs, lots of vegetable purees for secretly nutritional things (although M loves her veggies- she eats peas and green beans before anything else on her plate!), and this morning I made pie dough for my own toaster pastries, i.e. pop tarts.  It feels awesome!! 

I knew I was towards the end of my cycle, and this weekend I found myself thinking back to the first few months with M when I was a cooking mess- nothing was ready on time, much less at the same time as any other part of the meal, and I just could not get it together.  (I know, I've retroactively cut myself some slack, but I felt like such a huge failure at the time.)  But as I've been preparing all of these awesome things from my own kitchen, I was thinking, what if I'm pregnant?  Will I be able to keep this up when the new baby comes?

Which is just hilarious, as the CVS clerk can attest to the 2 huge boxes of pads I bought this morning.  Hahahahaha!

And then last night I started spotting, and I just thought to myself, well duh.  Why were you even hoping?

This morning I have been going back and forth all over the place.  One minute I am just so disappointed (although to be honest, our timing stunk last cycle, so it was a crazy long shot), and the other minute, I am so grateful that I can give M my undivided attention and love.  One minute, I am so jealous of people who get pregnant easily, and the other minute, I am beating myself up because how dare I complain- I have been blessed with M (and also because technically, we got pregnant with her "easily", in that we were on no meds and doing nothing except normal babymaking)!!!

It's a weird thing.  I apologize if this is hurtful for those of you with empty arms; if it seems insensitive that I'm complaining about CD1 even though we have M. We are so, so grateful for her, and she is 100% filled the hole in our family.  When it comes down to it, we are completely happy if God's plan for our family is the three of us.

But how long do I let myself wonder if our family will ever be any bigger?

A note

She emailed me back this afternoon  :)

The short and not-so-sweet is that yes, their arms are still empty, and in the meantime life has also dealt them a bunch of crap in general.  Not what any friend wants to hear about another but I was just glad to hear anything.  She is going to call me next week to really catch up.

Please keep both of them, individually and as a married couple, in your prayers.  Her hubby especially, because he's a kindred optimistic-all-the-time spirit like me, and she said he is finally losing hope that he'll be a dad, and it's very hard on him.  I totally feel his pain, because I had pretty much given up hope, too, and as an eternal optimist, that is not an easy thing to do.  (I never lost hope totally, just maybe 90% of it, haha.)

She said she doesn't want to bring me down with talking about still dealing with IF, and I can honestly say that I still think about it all the time, so it's not like I'm living in lala motherhood land where IF has no place.  Is that weird?  Not just because I'd love to "accidentally" conceive another baby as many infertiles do in the fairy tales, but because every time I hug Maryanne and rock her to sleep, I'm reminded of the times when I didn't have any baby to hug, and when I cried to myself in the same rocking chair when I found out another ungrateful friend was pregnant...again.   There are no words to express how thankful I am for M, but I don't think IF in the deepest sense will ever go away for me. 

Sending a prayer of thanks tonight for my friend and her willingness to trust me with her sadness and struggles.  Also sending a prayer that I will be able to be all that she needs me to be as her friend and support system.

On the other side

I called my friend a few days ago and left her a message.  It went something like this: "Hi, just calling to say hi.  I hope y'all are doing well down there, and I'd love to catch up sometime.  I really appreciate the gifts you sent for M's birthday; I hope you got my note.  I know it's been a while since we talked, and I have to confess that I'm a little worried that it's getting difficult for you to keep in touch.  I definitely don't want to leave you out of things, because I know we always talked about how neither of us wanted to be left out of our mom friends' lives, but I don't want to add to any hurt or ache you are feeling.  Please let me know how I can the best friend to you right now."

Good?  I haven't heard anything back from her...

I feel very unprepared for the situation I find myself in.  When I was in her place and dealing with my college friends who left me completely out, I hated hated hated it.  By some craziness, I wanted them to still send me pictures of their smiling kids, even if it stung me.  And that is what my friend and I had always agreed upon.  But that sounds so backwards to write.  Did I really want them to send me pictures of their kids who they flaunted around so presumptiously?  (Granted, I like to think I am very careful about not flaunting Maryanne around like some sort of prize.)


And then here I am, wondering if we'll ever be blessed with another baby, so in some ways I am back to feeling "Happy for {whoever}, but bummed for me." Which is also backwards because our family now includes Maryanne, who filled the HUGE hole in our hearts and our family, and who has fulfilled all our longings to share our love with a child.  So how can I be bummed?  No possible way!  But I find myself reading infertile blogs who had no issues conceiving #2 and thinking, "MAN, she is so freakin lucky.  I wish it would be so easy for us."

So I'm a little turned around about all this, but most of all, my heart aches for my friend.  Christmas is so difficult with empty arms, and I just pray that she and her hubby will be blessed with a miracle baby just like I was.

::Crickets::

Tee Jay left me a sweet comment to ask how we were doing, and I just have to oblige her and post real quick that we are all doing great!

M is 11 months old in a couple days, and she is AWESOME.  Hubby just got his pilot's license, and we went up in his plane on Friday after work, and it is SO COOL!!  M loved it, too.  Dogs are good :)  Work is really busy, and I wish I could just win the lottery already.  Our nanny has been with us since I went back to work in January, and I hope she stays with us until Maryanne goes to school...

My sister is due with her baby in 5 weeks.  Holy camoley.  Her shower was a huge success (or maybe instead of winning the lottery, can I just quit my real job and start a party planning business?), and I was so happy that so many people gave her such useful things.  She has still not asked me that much about my go at labor/delivery/motherhood, but I've given some unsolicited musings here and there, and I think I've accepted that that's going to be pretty much it unless actually having the baby jump starts a desire to see what's worked for her big sister.

As far as if they're excited, they are not as excited as we were (not sure if that is possible, though), but I think they are going to do okay.  Hubby and I and Maryanne hung out with them this afternoon, and we had a very enjoyable time, and they are both really cute/adoring to M.  It is so funny because all the time we don't hear from them or see them for a long time, we kind of build them up to be unsocial/unfriendly/uninterested in family members, but usually when we get together, we have a really nice time.

And speaking of seeing them, maybe the stars are thinking aligning because they want to get together with us for dinner this coming weekend, and she suggested that she and I get ice cream in a couple weeks the morning before her doctor's appointment.  I about fell off my chair.  Could it be possible that I might actually start to see her regularly?!?  How awesome would that be.

AND.

She is not going back to work after their baby comes.  I, of course, work from home full time, but because I work from home, I have a ton of flexibility in my hours.  Can you imagine all the fun things we can do together, with the kiddos?!?!  I don't exactly know how they crunched the numbers to make living on his salary doable, but apparently they did, and I just hope they were honest with themselves as far as their expenses go.  But all in all, given the recent improvement in the frequency of our get togethers, I am actually a little bit optimistic we will get to be mamas together, after all.

But enough about my sister ;-)

I'm still breastfeeding, although I think M is sort of self-weaning a bit- we are down to 2 times a day.  I got my first period post-baby almost a month ago, and raise your hand if you think we'll get a BFP this time?  Hahahahahahaha.  I am returning to acupuncture and taking my vitamins again, so we'll see.  At this point, we're just doing "general health/balance" treatments, and as much as I say at this point that I don't want to "try" as hard as last time, if we're not pregnant by December, I might ask her to do some more fertility-focused points.  We would both be 100% happy if our family is forever the three of us, so let's be clear about that!!

I really need to find time to return to yoga or running or something.  Just like 30 minutes a day.  It shouldn't be that hard!!!  I've been back in my normal clothes for a long time, I just feel like if I tried, I could be even smaller.  Smaller is relative, of course, I would still not be a size 4 or 6 :-P

Okay, I'm sure this is info overload.  I want so badly to keep up with this, I really do.  I promise not to let it sit untended for another 3 months ;-)  Leave a comment and tell me how you're doing!!  I read all your blogs while I'm nursing, so I'm pretty current on y'all, but it'd be great for you to say hi if you're still reading :)

Hullabaloo

I haven't been able to get back into frequent blogging (yet?), and most of my blog-reading takes place on my phone while I'm feeding Maryanne, but I take it that there has been some fuss over the creation of the new PAIL blogroll.

From my limited understanding, the issue is that there is already one universal infertility blog list (Stirrup Queens), so why do we need another? Or is the stink that it's exclusive to those still trying?

When I first heard about the new blogroll, and maybe I am not a deep enough thinker or something, but I was really excited. I viewed it as another resource as an infertile mom, but still an infertile. The same way that I view Stirrup Queens. Is there such a thing as too many resources? Of course, it will comprise people who are on the blessed other side of being childless, but I have found that infertility still affects me daily- good and bad. Just because I have a baby doesn't mean that I am not still the biggest cheerleader for my TTC or childfree buddies.

There were many days before we became pregnant that I absolutely not stomach another pregnant after IF blog. But there were some days when reading about someone's triumph over the IF crap gave me so much hope. Is having a blogroll that is entirely a testament to people's beating IF really a bad thing?

So anyway, I joined PAIL. I am also on Stirrup Queens' list, but I forget where.... I hope that it didn't offend any readers who are still trying. I know I don't have alot of extra brain cells these days, but maybe people are overthinking it and getting themselves into a tizzy? Why can't we all just get along? ;-)