I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore

And this isn't going to be any mush 80's love song, ladies.

After thinking about this all day (and then after venting to one of my online friends), I decided that this deserves another blog post.

First, let's give this lady a name (because typing 42 year old pregnant biatch is just WAY to long).  Let's call her Faye.  Here are the bullet points about why Faye's comment hurt so much today.

• Faye knows about our infertility struggles.  I have been very open in sharing our struggles.  Her remarks today (and actions/remarks detailed below) are NOT those made by someone who DOESN'T FREAKIN KNOW ANY BETTER.
• Faye announced her first pregnancy to me by handing me a dr's appointment reminder with "OB" written on it.  Way to be suave and to show your concern for other's feelings there, Faye.
• Faye refused to "eat for 2" during her pregnancy.  She gained the bare minimum weight possible.  Her baby was only 6 lbs (if that but I don't have his birth weight committed to memory).
• Faye's child is not growing appropriately.  Her Pedi has told her to feed him anything fattening that she can.  She goes ON AND ON about how concerned the Pedi is about the child's weight.  Then, she will say how he cried at 6 and wouldn't stop because he was hungry but she refuses to feed him because it isn't his dinner time.  My personal opinion is that Faye is afraid to feed him because her husband is quite overweight and she is afraid her child will be overweight too.
• When I found out about our beta of 8 and that if our FET had resulted in a pregnancy that I was loosing the baby, she looks at me with wide eyes and a smile on her face and says something like "that is great news!" and I quickly informed her that it wasn't such great news.

And these are just some of the big offenders.

So in answer to your question Katie - I just shot her a look, shook my head, and walked away.

And that is all I have got to say about that.  Today anyway.

And Then She Said

My friend Jill (who gave birth to a beautiful baby boy 2 months ago) brought him by work for the first time today. So this 42 year old preggers whee-atch says to another coworker (who has been married a while and no kids or mention of having any)"well (insert name here), I guess you'll be next!!!"

Please, someone, cut my heart out with a spoon. I think that would hurt less.

Lapped Again and Conflicted Feelings

17 months ago, a lady who works for me (who was 40 at the time) passed me in the race to motherhood.  I didn't feel so bad about this because she was, after all, 40.

For the last few weeks, she has been exhibiting signs that have made me wonder if she had something baking in the oven.

Today the rumor mill passed along the information that she is, in fact, pregnant again at 42.

Damn It.  Lapped Again.

I know in my heart that our plan for making our lives happier before we move forward with adoption is the right thing to do. After all, I think that the waiting will be more tolerable when we aren't counting the minutes until change can happen.


But there are times, like today, that I feel torn by this decision.  Is putting adoption on hold the right thing to do???  After all, it has now been over 8 months since our last fertility treatment and we are no closer to having a child.  If we had just signed on the dotted line, would we have a baby by now?  We aren't getting any younger (as evidenced by the birthdays we both had last month).

It is hard to know if the path you are following is the right course of action sometimes.  Both paths will lead you to the same place in the end.  One path is longer, you are happier while you walk it, and because you are happier with your path, you are a happier parent.  The other path may be shorter, but certain parts of the path won't be as rosy.

And most days I can feel certain that the path we are walking down is the right one for us.  But other days, like today, I just feel downright shitty about the path we have chosen.

Out with the Old

This past weekend, Derek and I began the process of the necessary cleaning to get our house on the market.  The first thing on our list was to clean out the garage.

Although we have a large workshop on our property, we have used our garage as a staging area for all of our home remodeling for the last 4 years.  It was just much more convenient.  And, if we saw a good deal on something we would need for one of our upcoming projects, we would buy it an put it in the garage.  It was not unusual to see a toilet, closet storage systems, plumbing supplies, a wide array of paint, numerous power tools, shop vac, a big stack of tile, trim, a double oven...you get the picture.  Add to that the trash from our latest project, our normal household trashcans, recycling containers, and the chest freezer and there was no way our cars were fitting in that garage.

Well, we rented a truck and we hauled a bunch of trash to the dump.  1,100 lbs to be exact.  This included all of the items from the chest freezer. (We are going to sell/donate it).  The most interesting trash?  I would have to say that it was probably our wedding cake topper (minus the piece we ate on our 1 year wedding anniversary) and some fish that my dad gave me before I even met Derek.  YUCK. 

Then we loaded up remodeling supplies that were left over from various projects and took them to our local Habi.tat for Hum.anity Re.Store and donated them.

Next we cleared out the rest of the tools and supplies and took them down to the workshop and got that place all organized as well.

People, I am proud to say that we parked in the garage for the first time on Sunday.  It is really nice.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working on decluttering our upstairs.  So far, this has consisted of a lot of sorting and organizing.  I still have a little bit to do upstairs, but for the most part things are going well.  I still need to de-personalize things and take down pictures of us and our families.  That is probably the part of putting our house on the market that I dislike the most.  And the part that I dread the most is the built ins in the family room.  I am struggling with exactly what to pack up and not leave them looking totally empty.

We have also been working in the basement cleaning up the storage areas.  I have a huge stack of items to be donated in the coming couple of weeks.  I have been labeling boxes and color coding them as to their importance.  (I know, such a geeky thing to do, right?  But it totally works and it makes me feel in control of something). 

The color codes stand for the importance of the box.  Since it is entirely possible that we will be moving in phases (house to apartment to apartment to house), I want to have things that will go to storage regardless of where we move in a certain color, boxes in storage that is easily acceptable in another color, and boxes that will go to the new location period in a third color.

We have another real estate agent coming to speak with us tomorrow night, so hopefully things will go well.

Looking Back

Today, I was talking to my dear friend Melissa about their latest developments in their infertility struggles. They had their follow up conversation with their RE today regarding their failed FET.  The RE gave her the news that in addition to MF, her eggs are probably also contributing to their struggles.

This conversation brought some memories to the surface for me - both the terrible day that we found out about our embryo fragmentation and also the day that I realized I would probably never carry our child.

I wasn't prepared for the fragmentation discussion.  I guess that even though I had always worried that I was the problem, finding out that your fears are confirmed took my heart to the pit of my stomach. 

The tougher realization for me was that I would probably never carry our child.  Coming to terms with that was a struggle for me - even if I didn't outwardly portray it every day, I wanted to be pregnant.  There are still days that I covet other women's swollen bellies and feel shafted that I might not get that opportunity (unless some Donor Embryos become available and that miraculously works).

Anyway, the point of this post is that my dear friend got some life altering news today.  She is holding things together very well right now, but I know that she could really use some Internet loving.  Please drop by and give her some if you get the chance.

You can find Melissa by clicking HERE.

Freaking Out

What if our house doesn't sell?

What if our house sells before we are ready for the move?

What if we only get offers that won't allow us to have a down payment for a new house?

What if our house DOES sell but we can't find jobs in our target home town?

What if the perfect job comes along but our house still hasn't sold?

What if we are stuck in this shithole of a situation forever???


Shit.  Can you tell I am stressed?

No More Promises, I Promise...

After my last post where I vowed to be a better blogger, life was just busy and I didn't keep my promise.  I am sorry.

Let's see - what has been going on here?

Well - the master bath is done.  Finally.  I never posted the story on here, so I guess I should fill you in.  Derek and I took out a small shower (36 x 36) and a disgusting jetted garden tub and replaced that with a large walk in shower.  The shower is about 37 x 99.  It is HUGE.  There are 6 body jets and a rainfall shower head and a handheld shower head.  Instead of a shower curtain, there is a large glass panel.  It is really a stunning shower.  We thought we were done with this massive shower we had built - and we took our first shower in it.  Shortly after, we determined that the grout in the base (the "specialty" grout we were advised to use by the home improvement store) was getting soft and pliable.  A bit of research later, we determined that it should have never been used in our shower.  So, all of it had to be removed and replaced.  Luckily, we had only used this grout on the floor of the shower.  After hours and hours and HOURS of removing grout from 2X2 tiles (seriously, I spent about 3 hours a night/day scraping this stuff out), we have gotten the grout replaced and the new grout is sealed.  At this point, we are giving it plenty of time to cure to ensure that we don't have to repeat this process again later.  The finished product is really beautiful and I really need to post some pictures for you all.

We also renovated both my closet and Derek's with Clo.set.Maid Systems that we had purchased a while back.  The resulting closets are pretty awesome.

Derek and I both celebrated getting a year older.  OK, so celebrating is a bit of an overstatement.  It happened and there was no stopping it.  'Nuff said.

Then we headed off on a vacation to Michigan to spend some time with Derek's family.  We were gone for almost 2 weeks.  It was marvelous!!!  The first week we were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at a fishing camp - Derek's grandpa has been going to this place for over 60 years and he was super excited about going.  The area really is beautiful, but without quite a few modern conveniences.  Like TV.  Or cell phone service.  We actually had to drive around to find cell service so that I could call my father to wish him a happy father's day.

During the last week of the vacation, we spent time scouting out a couple of the locations that we had on our list of possible places to move.  We spent time with real estate agents in both of these locations seeing what kind of houses we could get for the range of money we were anticipating spending on a house.  We also spent some time getting to know these areas to see if they were really places we would want to live.  We were able to pretty much rule one of these locations out (we realized that it didn't have all of the amenities/quality of life items that we were looking for).  We also narrowed down the areas we would want to live in so that when we were looking online, we would know if we were interested in house.

We didn't get home until Wednesday night.  We worked both Thursday and Friday.  Then we spent this 3 day weekend on more house projects.  We painted the front door and did touch up work in that area, did some touch up work on trim in the rest of the house, painted the door to the garage, etc. 

We have a checklist that we are working through and I am hoping that we can knock a few of these out on week nights after work and this next weekend or two so that we will be able to get our house on the market in the next couple of weeks.  Then we wait.

Until then, I can't promise that my blogging/commenting will be anything more than sporadic.  I hope you all understand.