Muscle Aches and Heart Pain

Funny that I don't have too much to write about when not consumed with fertility treatments. I have just been trying to keep myself occupied, waiting on the next big thing to happen. I am looking forward to starting school in January. It will definitely keep me occupied. I'm heading to Alabama next Saturday for a week with my family. It will be insane and stressful, but I will be glad to see them. I hope that I don't start my period while I'm there. I'm "supposed" to start the week of Christmas ( I can never really pinpoint the day) and I'll be home on the 21st. We decided that if I start while I'm out of town that we will just begin treatments in January. If I am home when I start, we will begin treatments with this next cycle. Who the heck knows?

Remember me telling you that I was going to get back on the wagon with my weight loss and exercise? Doing pretty well with it. I did a body pump class at the gym on Monday and couldn't walk until Wednesday (quad pain....oh the quad pain!). Then decided to do an aerobics class last night and most likely won't be able to walk until Sunday (calf pain, oh the calf pain!). I'm beginning to think this trying new things is for the birds! I need to work out but I'm in pain so I feel like it gives me an excuse not to. I'm such a wimp! I will continue to work out and press on, but I can't promise I'll stop whining about it any time soon!!

Our social worker rescheduled our home study for this Wednesday night. She will come to my house at 5:00 p.m. and do my individual interview. Hubs will be home by 6:00 p.m. Then she will interview us together and the do his separately. I'm ready to get the ball rolling on this. Once that is complete and submitted (she likes to have them completed within 1 week) we will be able to submit an interest form on the children we have in mind. I came across another girl that we are very interested in. She is 6 years old and is so cute. But, we could be one of 50 families looking at her. I hope not, but we'll just have to wait and see. WAIT WAIT WAIT. (heart pain....oh the heart pain!)

Nothing too exciting happening over the weekend. I'm getting my wig did tomorrow. (An old co-worker friend of mine used to say this when referring to getting her hair styled. It's stuck with me for years now!) I LOVE getting my hair cut/colored. I haven't seen my natural color in years. No idea what color it even is at this point! I think I'm going a little bit darker with the color...you know, warm it up for winter....well, as much of a winter as we get here in central Texas!

Nothing Interesting....

We were supposed to have our home study today but we got a call at 9:00 this morning saying that our social worker was out sick and that we need to reschedule. Crap. So, we are not sure when that will be. Of course, the house was clean, I made lunch ahead of time and had everything in place. I can do it again, but we were really looking forward to the next step.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving weekend. We went to some not so close friend's house on Thursday. It was nice but nothing like friends and family.

I'm back on the horse with my diet and exercise routine. Hubs and I went to a Body Pump class tonight and we basically lifted weights for 1 hour. It was a cool class but my arms, even my fingers, are shaking. I literally had noodle legs coming down the stairs at the gym and almost fell. Nice, huh? I'm trying really really hard to get these last 35 ish pounds off. That still leaves me technically "overweight" but at this point I don't give a damn. I just want to be healthy and I have a number in mind. I'm truly more worried about my insides being healthy. I have a friend who is about 25 pounds overweight and she was telling me that she's so fat that she can't even walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded. I told her that she needs to start worrying more about being fit than being thin. I am a lot bigger than her and have no problems at all walking up stairs. I did a year ago, but since I've been working out on a regular basis it's not biggie anymore. Being thin does not equal being healthy. You know what I mean? Why do we as women get so caught up on what the scale says?

I am heading to Birmingham to see my family in 2 weeks. I'm looking forward to it but it will be very stressful. Ugh...

Nothing else...just wanted to give you a quick update.

What to do?

Isn't it odd that I am supposed to check for pregnancy tomorrow and I'm almost 5 days into my period? Things are slowly tapering off but holy hell! This has been a heavy period! I have stumped my nurses and my doctor. They don't see this type of thing ever. Go me! Nothing I do is text book. Haven't we figured this out yet? I did talk to my RE this morning. She was sorry that things ended the way they did. I told her that I would not be going on to IVF until we go this bleeding issues sorted out and she agreed. We will do one more Inject/IUI cycle and hopefully make it to test day next time. She wants me to do progesterone in oil injections but I'm not sure they will work. I did those during my IVF cycle and I still spotted a few days early. She also wants me to add estrogen to the mix along with whatever progesterone supplement I will be doing. After ovulation our estrogen levels drop drastically. While this is fine for some women, I'm apparently the "one in 200" who has issues. The idea is to keep the estrogen levels up as well as progesterone. We will do bloodwork 1 week past ovulation to check levels to see where we are. I asked her to do it this time and she said we didn't need to. I'm going to just start telling her what I want done and just do it. aarrrggghhh!! She doesn't want us to go right into another cycle because she is certain that I have cysts. So, we wait for our next cycle and start the fun all over again.

On different news, we have our home study schedule for Monday morning. Our social worker will come to our house for a 4 hour interview. Not the least bit intrusive, eh? She is really nice and we like her a lot. I'm still not sure what we are going to do. I would love to get on the adoption train right away but I just don't know. Hubs and I have a lot to discuss and decisions to make. Doing fertility treatments and going through adoption at the same time is not fun. I'm tired of the unknowns!

So, that's the story of me as of today. Things can change quickly so keep your running shoes close by! Happy Thanksgiving!!

I need your help

Can anyone tell me why the crap I am bleeding, full flow at 10 days past ovulation? This is clearly not supposed to happen. I always spot 2-3 days before my period comes. I don't feel like this is normal but I'm told that it is. Even during this last inject/IUI cycle I started spotting at 11 dpo. And the doc said that we needed to fix that. After this last IUI I mentioned the spotting again but she didn't feel like it would be an issue. I told her that it's ME we are talking about and that I always go against the norm. She decided that I would do the progesterone vag. suppositories once a day. (I did those during my last cycle too and still spotted too early). So, Friday night I went to the bathroom and had some reddish spotting. Not a ton but it shouldn't be there at all. It continued through the night and decided to do another supp. on Saturday morning. The bleeding tapered off throughout the day but last night it was full on bright red. I did another supp. last night but there was so much going on "down there" that is just slipped right on out. Needless to say I was up all night long to see what was going on. It is getting heavier as I type. I am beyond frustrated. I called the RE office today just to let them know what's going on but they told me unless the doc on call had something for me to do, they wouldn't call me back. Which is understandable. It's not like they can stop the bleeding at this point. I'm guessing that this is a pretty good reason I'm not getting pregnant. All the eggs/embryos in the world won't get me pregnant if my lining decides to take a hike before it's supposed to. This happened during my IVF cycle too. I started spotting early then and I was on progesterone in oil shots everyday.

Has this ever happened to any of you? If so, what did your doctor do about it? I definitely have progesterone issues. I'm convinced that low prog. is what caused my first miscarriage. It just royally pisses me off that this is happening. We know that IVF is our next option but I don't want to move forward until we can figure this out. It's not worth the effort to go through it all and then have the embryos slide right on out. It's like they don't even have a chance. The lining just starts breaking down before anything can implant, assuming that they would even do that.

The hits just keep coming.

One week to go!

It's amazing how calm I've felt over the last week. Who knows what this next week will bring, but for now, I'm enjoying the relative calm. I have been worried about OHSS (where my ovaries almost explode and my body fills up with fluid) but so far, I've felt fine. There have only been a few times where my abdomen has been tender...like if I press on it. Keri tells me to just not press on it! Good advice! We'll see how next week goes. I feel quite bloated but I'm not so sure it's the ovaries as much as the Hummus/pita chips/cucumber/bell pepper/Texas Pete's hot sauce that I've become addicted to! It's no secret that I love food! But lately this has been the thing I love the most. I take a crunchy pita chip, scoop up some hummus, drown it in hot sauce, top it with a cucumber or bell pepper or both, and stuff it in my face as fast as I can! I literally have to force myself to stop eating it. I clearly have issues! Where was I? Oh yeah, the 2WW. I will go in for blood work next Wednesday. I will probably use the 1 pregnancy test I have in the house that morning. I'm too cheap to start testing early. The outcome will be the same either way. Either I'm pregnant or I'm not.

I haven't had any symptoms to speak of....well, unless you think wanting to sleep all day is one. And actually, my nips have been tingly today. I try not to put too much focus on symptoms because like I said last time, it could mean something or it could mean nothing.

Oh, I registered for school on Monday. New students have to register after everyone else so of course, the class times I wanted were taken. I'll take one class on Tues and Thurs from 1:30 to 4:30 ish (class and lab) and the other one is Mon and Wed nights from 7:30 - 9:00 ish? Not the ideal schedule, but I'm glad to just get in. One little glitch in the program and I'm pushed back a year or more. This is probably another reason I feel more calm. I had soo much going on a few weeks ago. Fertility treatments, continuing education for my insurance license, studying for and taking the math assessment test for school, adoption classes and homework and gathering all of our paperwork for the adoption packet, Whew! No wonder I was stressed!

Speaking of adoption, we are still waiting to hear from our social worker about our home study. She said she had one more slot open for November but I'm wondering if that's gonna happen now. If not, no big deal. We can have it done in December. Plus, it would be nice to know the outcome of this cycle first. More waiting. You would think with all the waiting we do that we would get used to it. That's not the case! I hate it! We've already waited over 3 years for a child and now we just get to wait longer.

One of our local radio stations is playing Christmas music around the clock. It's weird listening to Sleigh Ride when it's 75 degrees outside. To all of you surrounded by snow, I'm sorry! Actually, I will never get used to this heat. We only need coats a few days out of the year. In Austin, it's either holy hell I'm going to catch on fire hot or like it is now. I would gladly trade the 110 degree summer days for snowy winter days! We went to Jackson Hole, WY last December and I loved it. I have never seen so much snow! Think I would tire of it day after day?

Fun times!

We went back to Sea World this weekend with our bestest buddies Keri and Dean! Their little peanut went too. He's sooo cute! I talk about him all the time, but seriously, he's the best baby I've ever seen! It was a new experience for Dean and Peanut so it was fun watching them! Here's the little guy!

The highlights of our day were feeding the dolphins...

Getting splashed by the baby dolphins in the pool... (notice salt water on camera lens!)

Feeding the sea lions (they are loud and barky!!!)...

Spending time with my awesome buddy who looks more like me than my own sister...

Having fun and spending the day with hubs....

But most of all, spending the day with the people I love!!

Random Ramblings

I used to work with this lady and her daughter. She had a birthday party tonight (22nd) and invited me to come. I was so excited to see them because I haven't seen them in forever! I got to their gorgeous house and we were catching up. Well, Nicole, the one I used to work with, said, "By the way, David is going to be here." What does that mean? Well, let me catch you up. I took a job in August 2007 working as an office manager at an insurance company and David was my boss. Things were great for several months and I even got a great review and a raise. Then David lost his mind. His best friend owned an insurance office in Oklahoma (same company, different branch) and his friends wife (we'll call her H) was his office manager. Well, David started having an affair with H and moved her to Austin from OK. Nicole worked in the office as a recruiter and David fired her so H could have her job. She also knew how to do my job and it paid more than the recruiting job. See where this is going? I knew it was just a matter of time before I was out the door. And sure enough, on January 2 David called me into his office and said that he just couldn't afford me anymore and that he had to let me go. He promised a measly severance package and owed me back wages of around $1800. I asked him for everything is writing and he refused. So, I emailed him asking again if he would put it in writing and when I should expect the back wages owed to me. He responded and said that he never promised me anything and that he didn't know what I was talking about. LONG story that I won't bore you with, but he told lies to home office and they wanted to deny my unemployment. It was a ton of drama, took me months to get it all sorted out, etc. I did get all money owed but it wasn't easy. SOOOO, all of that to say, when I heard that David was going to be there I told Nicole that I was leaving. I am quite mouthy and am not afraid to start a fight. I just didn't want to ruin her birthday by getting into with this man. I was just sick to my stomach about it. They convinced me to just stay until he got there. So, about an hour later he and H show up. I immediately grabbed my stuff and left. I walked past him, not saying a word, and he just stared at me. It was miserable! He ruined my fun evening and I don't think that is the least bit fair. Hmmpphh!!

On a different note, we finished our adoption classes and are waiting to have our home study completed. It's basically 4 hours of questioning. Sounds fun, huh? The girl that we have been interested in on the available children website is no longer there. We don't know if she's been adopted or what's going on. We are both very disappointed. What can I do? Nothing, that's what. I really hope I get pregnant with the result being a live baby. I know that adopting and having a bio. child at the same time is frowned upon. Maybe this will work out and we can come back to adoption later. ????? Once again...Hmmppphhh!!

I've noticed that all of my blogs are about the same thing, over and over. I really want to tell you different stories. Maybe I'll start with the story of me. To start...

I grew up in Birmingham, AL and lived there until I was 30. I had about 10 million friends and life was a blast! But, I got a promotion with my job and moved to Jackson, MS in September 2003. That's where I met my hubs. He had moved to Jackson from Princeton, NJ for a job. I found him on match. com, sent him a wink by mistake!!! and he responded. I asked him out first and our first date was to the rodeo. The restaurant we wanted to eat at for our first date was closed so we went for cheap Chinese. It was an awesome date and as they say, the rest is history! We got engaged 10 months later and married 3 months after that in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. It was beautiful and it was just the 2 of us. To appease our families, we had a wedding once we got back to Jackson. It was nice and we had a great time, but I say destination weddings are the way to go! Much less stressful. Five months after we married, Hubs got a job offer in Austin and we moved a few weeks later. We've travelled a ton and have a lot of fun. But infertility is not fun and it has been at the forefront of our lives for over 3 years now. So, there ya go. A little about me.